Here’s the scenario: The home is 7 years old – we’re the 3rd owner. The wall upstairs between a bedroom and a family room has pipes that bring water to the bathrooms. The recirculating pump in the garage runs at odd hours and causes these pipes to expand and contract. Lots of irritating noise for my son who was fortunate enough to draw the room with the pipes behind his wall. I believe (non-plumber speaking here) that the cause of the noise is the braces that were placed to hold the pipes in place. I’ve brought out two plumbers who confirm my thought. Also, the home was the model and the builder told me the home was bought “as-is” so they declined to cover the repair.
Does anyone know for certain whether this issue/problem should be covered by the builder? If so, where can I get documentation that states it’s a covered issue?
Opening a wall to perform some repairs on pvc piping and fixtures and then repairing the drywall is cheap. I wouldn’t get too excited about it being a construction defect.
The noise is due to the dilatation/contraction of the hot water pipe rubbing against the wood studs — the noise is actually coming from the wood stud. There’s nothing “structurally” wrong with that.
Like bugs, says, it’s easy to open the wall and fix that problem if you want to (probably about $500). Otherwise, you could turn off the hot water recirculating pump but that would cause your not being able to get “instant” hot water at each application.
Interesting how hot water recirculating system saves water but wastes a lot of energy.
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