loud humming and vibration in water pipes

[Mrs _ Columbo]

We live in a top floor tenement flat. I have called Scottish Water about this problem and they say that they have not carried out any work in our area for the last 2 weeks and that none of my neighbours have reported a problem.

We have intermittently heard a loud humming and vibration (not banging) in the pipe which leads from our stopcock. Our stopcock is above our front door inside our flat. Sometimes the humming seems to be coming from near the water tank / shower room area (next to each other).

The humming happens on and off, previously just for a few seconds and stops. In the last few days it has happened for minutes at a time, this afternoon for at least 5 minutes. It can happen anytime of the day or night and does not appear to happen because we have turned a tap on or flushed the toilet or the boiler being on.

I have tried turning the stopcock off and then turning it slowly on again (while it hummmed) but this didn't seem to make any difference.

The only thing that I can think might cause it is we have an old and dripping constantly ball valve in our water tank. Could this cause his humming?

I hope you can give some advise because it is probably waking my neighbours up!

 

[Nick6588]

Change your ball valve, probably the washer inside is worn so it intermitently lets water through causing the arm to move "knocking" the washer giving the vibration as water is let through and stopped quickly

 

[village idiot]

If changing the ball valve doesn't work, try changing the stopcock

 

[SimonG]

Are you sure it's your pipes? Could it be coming from a neighbours flat?

 

[AllyBongo]

If you live in a top floor tenament, your water main could be feeding half of your blocks water tanks. Very old building, with very old water systems. As you say it could be the valve in your water tank.... But it could be anyones.

Have you shut your stopcock completely when the noise is occurring? Noisy pipes can sound like they come from anywhere. If its defo your stopcock, you should check what tanks they are feeding in the loft, you can then narrow the noise down to X amount of tanks, gently open the ball valves in the tanks and see which one is noisy.