Flushmate causing water hammer

My 6-year-old American Standard toilet with Flushmate appears to be the source of an increasingly-severe water hammer in the pipes behind the toilet. The water hammer has been present since the toiled was installed in our addition 6-1/2 years ago, but it was only occasional and mild until recently. Now it happens whenever the water is turned off at any of the other fixtures in the bathroom and will often occur when the water is turned on, as well. The reason I believe it is the Flushmate is that I can make the symptom disappear completely by shutting off the water supply to the toilet and then flushing it. The water hammer goes away immediately and does not re-occur. Do you know if this can be fixed by repairing/replacing the Flushmate? I would rather replace the toiled with a gravity-feed than tear into the walls to add an air chamber to the pipes. (Oddly enough, the twin sinks in the same bathroom already have air chambers installed, but the air hammer happens anyway.) Thanks for helping.

Water hammer is caused when rapidly flowing water is abruply shot off. The water in the pipes wants to keep moving , and any loose pipes are caused to bang around. I do not usually suspect a Flushmate to cause this problem because compared to some other types of fill mechanisms, the cartridge and regulator seems to turn off the water slowly.

Since your problem is growing in severity and seems to be not limited to the toilet, I would first suspect a pressure problem. This can easily be checked.

Thanks, Jimbo, for the prompt response. Perhaps I was in error in calling this problem a water hammer; water hammer is the thing it most reminds me of. What happens (and it happens when the water shuts off from filling the toilet as well as when turning off faucets -- or on) is a burst of muffled sounds from the area of the wall behind the toilet. The sounds are staccato in nature and usually occur in more than one grouping, though there is occasionally just a single longer burst of sound. When the toilet water supply valve is open, the sounds occur. When the valve is closed and the Flushmate pressure tank is drained, there are absolutely no sounds. It is this 100% correlation with the Flushmate status which leads me to believe it is directly related to the Flushmate. Water pressure in the system is between 40 and 65 pounds. Could there be a problem with the Flushmate valve leaking which might cause this?

The sounds you describe are generally referred to as water hammer, or the more techincal description "banging pipes". ! If the toilet is the only fixture which causes this, then yes something in the lower supply portion of the Flushmate may have worn or loose O-rings, etc. It is not considered repairable, but the entire supply assembly for the Flushmate is readily available. Basically, anything which is loose or worn can vibrate under water flow; this vibration is transferred to the water stream within the pipes, and the pipes transfer the sound to anything solid they can touch ( 2X4).

Flushmate toilets causing water hammer????

Sam Johnson said EXACTLY what has been going on in my home. I moved into new construction in October 2003, and we had Flushmate toilets put in all three bathrooms. The clanging noise happens every day whether we turn on a faucet or not. The clang normally does not happen when a toilet is flushed. Any faucet turned on in any of the bathrooms causes a clang. Usually the clangs occur behind the wall where the toilet is, but sometimes I will hear it where our main water feed line is. I don't know what to do!

We've tried everything. We've shut our feed line from the building itself and run out the faucets and then turned the water back on. We've shut off the feed to the toilets and flushed, but after a while, once we turned the water back on, the clangs started up again.

What bothers me most of all is that there will be clanging noises when nothing is happening. A big metallic bang sound will just happen for no reason. Why is this happening? What's causing it? Is it the Flushmate toilets?

I had a similar problem... read this:
https://terrylove.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2116&highlight=Water+hammer

water flowwwwwwwww

JIMBO....I had a hammer also that was pressure related. The b/c shut off so abruptly that it caused perpetual motion in the cl. tank. The float bounced up and doen wildly. There was high pressure and I don't remember how high.
There were 2 or 3 other toilets and they didn't bounce like this one.
At that time I used a good quality Mansfield b/c and set the float to regulate the flow into the tank.
I either reccomended a reducing valve or an expansion tank......

what i like and use in my own home

Korky quiet fill, nice and QUIET

Toilet - Water Hammer

I recently (2 years ago) had a new bathroom added to my home. When toilet is shutting off a large noise is made by the pipes which appears to be water hammer. The first thing the plumber who installed the pipes and toilet did was replace the fluidmaster. When that did not work he installed a water pressur reducing valve since he felt the pressre was too high. That also did not work, and has lowered the pressure for showers in my house. Any thought on solutions to this problem?