Hi,
I live in an apartment and the our downstairs neighbors take baths and showers late at night. This was never a problem until they installed a new shower body and now we can hear a very loud water rush noise in our apt (the noise is present during the entire shower or bath, not just at startup. It's not water hammer.) When this first started happening, we did a little experiment by replacing their older rainshower head (8+GPM) with a Kohler 2.5GPM head (we used my shower head) and it was dead silent when using the shower, but not the bath. He bought a new rainshower head and the noise is a little more than our "experiment" but totally acceptable. However the problem still persists when using the bath. We've had the shower body replaced already, with only a minimal noise reduction. I'm no plumber, but I'm thinking the reason for the noise reduction when using the new shower head is due to the reduction of water flow thru the system (body, pipes, etc). Is there anything that can be done about the bath noise (it's the same sound as with the old shower head)? I was thinking that installing a reducing coupling 1/2" to 3/8" and then another from 3/8" to 1/2" between the shower body bath output and the actual bath spigot would act as a flow restrictor and reduce the water flow through the shower body and reduce the noise. Is the flawed thinking? The local plumber says it can't be done but was not able to explain why it would not work. Any other advice? What about getting a "high flow" shower body (3/4" pipe in/out)?
thanks so much for any help!
Tom
I live in an apartment and the our downstairs neighbors take baths and showers late at night. This was never a problem until they installed a new shower body and now we can hear a very loud water rush noise in our apt (the noise is present during the entire shower or bath, not just at startup. It's not water hammer.) When this first started happening, we did a little experiment by replacing their older rainshower head (8+GPM) with a Kohler 2.5GPM head (we used my shower head) and it was dead silent when using the shower, but not the bath. He bought a new rainshower head and the noise is a little more than our "experiment" but totally acceptable. However the problem still persists when using the bath. We've had the shower body replaced already, with only a minimal noise reduction. I'm no plumber, but I'm thinking the reason for the noise reduction when using the new shower head is due to the reduction of water flow thru the system (body, pipes, etc). Is there anything that can be done about the bath noise (it's the same sound as with the old shower head)? I was thinking that installing a reducing coupling 1/2" to 3/8" and then another from 3/8" to 1/2" between the shower body bath output and the actual bath spigot would act as a flow restrictor and reduce the water flow through the shower body and reduce the noise. Is the flawed thinking? The local plumber says it can't be done but was not able to explain why it would not work. Any other advice? What about getting a "high flow" shower body (3/4" pipe in/out)?
thanks so much for any help!
Tom