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Noisy Toilet Pipes


londoneye

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Hi all

After we have flushed our toilet, it fills very noisily, then just to compound the problem, right at the end of the filling process it lets our a horrendous screech that can be heard i am sure several villages away.      my OH is a carpenter by trade, and plumbing is not really his forte; however its start to drive me seriously insane.    a friend told us that perhaps we should put a restricter on the (toilet/pipe ??).   Not sure if this really is the answer but he could well be correct.   does anyone else have, or has had this problem in the past?

toilet is upstairs if that helps, on first floor.

 

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We cured ours (on three loos) by replacing the valve thingy that shuts off when the cistern is full - don't know the proper name. We put properly-made ones in, which you can buy from anywhere that sells plumbing stuff, to replace the horrible plasticky things that were in the loos before.

Son, who is a heating engineer in England, told us to do much the same as your friend, but no joy. Obviously doesn't work on French plumbing.

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Changing the ball valve (actually a float valve, but that's just being picky) is usually the solution. You can find them, in the plumbing section of any brico. Look for a model which calls itself silenceax or silence or similar. They all have the same connection on them. turn off the cold supply, open the lowest tap to drain off the pressure and empty a bit out of the system. find a couple of spanners the right size, disconnect the old one and put in the new.

Make sure that the washer is in place and that the assembly stays vertical as you tighten it up (especially if its float mechanism is a rising and falling block of polystyrene).

The noise our loo made (one loo, just off the living room) rivaled Concorde taking off. Now it's as quiet as a mouse !

p

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thanks all.

its really funny that you shouldmention concorde because i lived in hounslow for a while, and at 7.00 pm everyday all you could see were people's mouth's moving, either on television or from person in front of you.   I have been thinking for several weeks now that flushing the toilet provides the same effect in our house!   Sadly we cannot normally just manage the on-off at 7.00 pm !

i will try your  suggestions and i am sure it will work.   thanks again

 

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[quote user="Graham"]I have a similar problem on 2 of our loos and had assumed it was caused by air in the system. I will now look forward to changing the plastic valves for metal to get some peace and quiet - or at least to be able to hear the tractors going past![/quote]

I don't believe it's a matter of plastic for metal, necessarily; my experience was to change elderly, corroded metal for new plastic for it to render the filling quiet.

The screeching as the valve closes is a type of rapid oscillation, exacerbated by mineral deposits in the pipework.

p

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It might well be that tired valves make these noises, but in our case the valves concerned were practically new, just cheap and nasty. Either way it should be cured by replacing the existing valves with better ones. Turning down the inlet tap to reduce the flow, which I suppose has much the same effect as fitting a restrictor, tended to improve things for us on a highly temporary basis, but in the medium term merely meant the noises went on for longer, as the cisterns took longer to fill.
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"After we have flushed our toilet, it fills very noisily, then just to compound the problem, right at the end of the filling process it lets our a horrendous screech that can be heard i am sure several villages away.      my OH is a carpenter by trade, and plumbing is not really his forte; however its start to drive me seriously insane."

We had this problem as well (sounds as though it is very common!) and as we don't do plumbing (or much other ) DIY we called the local plombier who sorted the problem for us, probably he did what everyone else has suggested.[8-|]

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yes, its nice to know i am not the only one suffering the horrendous noise!   feel a bit foolish that i have left it so long, when solution seems (hopefully) to be quite straight-forward, but perhaps at least this thread will assist other people not to have their nerves worn thin for months with that awful noise!

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