Heating System Noise

IanInHerts

We have a Joule and Samsung heat pump system in our new-build timber-framed home, by Willan Living of Cumbria. The system installer was DJ Taylor Plumbing & Heating Ltd of Appleby-In-Westmorland.

The water tank and associated pumps are in the garage. Above the garage is our master bedroom.

Willan Living says all Building Regulations have been adhered to, Joule says its equipment is operating normally, the installer isn’t interested, and we can’t sleep in the master bedroom because of the awful noise from the garage. This is despite setting the nighttime temperature on all thermostats in the house to the lowest possible (5 degrees C) so that the heating does not operate at night. The noise is therefore, presumably, solely from maintaining the water temperature within set limits.

We need to be able to sleep without being disturbed by the heating system, and I want to have the option of having the heating always running, which is what it was designed to do. I initially thought that the solution was sound proofing, which I thought the builder should have installed, but I now think that this would be at best a partial solution. I think that vibrations from the system are being transmitted through the structure and that resonance is involved. Sometimes it seems like the noise in the bedroom is louder than that in the garage. It certainly seems like that at night when the only sound we hear is from the water being heated.

We also suffer from bangs and creaks, which I suspect is from thermal expansion of pipes that are in contact with structural elements of the building. As well as being annoying in itself, I suspect this also provides a means of transmitting vibration into the building.

We need ideas for how to solve this, without (at least initially) bringing in an acoustics expert because they seem to charge £1,000 for just a brief inspection without any guarantee they will solve the problem.

Are there heating engineers with expertise in acoustics?

Why isn’t it more widely discussed that a heat pump system must operate at all hours and that therefore buyers of these systems and the houses they are installed in should consider the noises from all elements of the system and whether they can live with them, not just the noise from the heat pump itself? I wish we’d never bought this house.

People should realise that Building Regulations won’t help. In the words of a member of our local Building Control department, “the Building Regulations are silent in respect of noise being produced by plant and services within a dwelling”.