Nasty clickety pipes and how to avoid them?

[MikeSharp01]

Clicky pipes, when pipes expand and contract, have until today been quite a comfort. You know things are happening - the central heating comes on the pipes click, it goes off they click, click, click again, you dump a whole heap of hot water down the kitchen sink and click click click. So it goes on.

 

Last night we stayed in a hotel and everytime anybody did anything, our room or others, the pipes went clickety click - and it finally got to me. So, although we have done first fix plumbing, I am going to work out how to prevent the clicking and rework it all.

 

The problem is I don't have a clue how best to do it. I assume the clicking arises from / at the pipe clips - where else can it be. How have other people overcome this or am I really over thinking this?

[ProDave]

Pipes expand when they heat up and contract when the cool.  The clicks are where something along their route does not allow them to expand smoothly so they expand until they have built up a bit of pressure like a spring then click, they jump along a bit.

 

So make sure everywhere a pipe passes through a joist or is clipped in place the pipe can slide smoothly without restriction.  So big holes in joists. loose fitting pipe clips etc etc.

[Andehh]

And/or wrap them in some form of insulation, that acts as a slip membrane between them and something else!

[marshian]

Alternatively increase your rad sizes (in alignment with room heating requirements) and then lower the flow temp at the boiler.

 

The lower the boiler flow temp the less expansion in the pipes and as a result the clicking reduces.

 

In our house used to be terribly noisy every time the boiler fired up on 70 deg flow temps.

 

Over the years (with improvements to rad sizes and house insulation) I've managed to reduce flow temp to 45 to 55 deg C (manual weather compensation and scheduled heating periods)

 

With a boiler change as well as a move to WC flow temps and heating 24/7 it's now at ~30 deg 

 

 I only get click clacks from the pipe work just after I have finished a HW cycle (because the boiler heats the HW tank at 80 deg Flow Temp and a small slug of 80 deg HW gets dumped into the CH circuit when the boiler reverts to CH at ~30 Deg C and this does create a little pipe work noise for a couple of mins

[Nickfromwales]

I was discussing this exact thing with a client this morning, and I mentioned that I use offcuts of PVC conduit at the start / end of straight runs, flexible conduit at turns if they're pinch points, and to not allow pipes to rest on thin timber such as the OSB webs of I-beams.

 

In most instances where we install all the domestic plumbing for a self build client I make sure the pipes are insulated the whole length with a cheap 9mm wall EPS for all colds, and the same for sporadically used hots, and if there's a hot return then they get done in 19mm or 25mm wall insulation, bigger the better for those, but depends on bottlenecks and actually getting lots of that size insulation to congregate at the manifolds / UVC.

 

Then use all round patent band to hold the insulation not the pipe.

 

If you don't want to (or retrospectively cannot) insulate the whole run, then just use a 100mm section of insulation where you need to mechanically fix (clip) the pipe, and the patent band to replace the regular clip; so as to have the pipe slip freely inside the insulation.

 

Cold pipes actually don't really need to be done as they just go from ambient to cold and back again, just the hot pipes tbh. Insulating the colds is a 'thing' if you fear condensation will be an issue, but that's more prevalent with copper vs plastic push fit pipework so possibly moot. I just tell the guys to insulate it all so I don't have to program them with the information of which pipes to do / not do, for sanity.