Clanging Pipes

 

ANDRE: Yes, whenever my wife takes a shower and the hot water is running and my pipes – if you’re downstairs, they start cracking and making cracking noise.

 

LESLIE: Now, Andre, this doesn’t happen when you take a shower?

 

ANDRE: No, I don’t hear it.

 

LESLIE: What?!!! (Tom and Andre laugh) You are ignoring it, I am sure, and blaming the misses.

 

TOM: (overlapping voices) Yeah, he doesn’t hear it. Really. What’s happening …

 

ANDRE: Well, I’ve turned the shower on before and went downstairs and nobody was in it and I still heard it, so … (chuckles)

 

TOM: Yeah.

 

LESLIE: Maybe she’s tap dancing in the shower. Did you ever think of that? (chuckles)

 

TOM: Maybe she is, maybe she is. Andre, the reason this is happening is because as the hot water goes through the pipes, the pipes heat up and they obviously expand. Now, depending on how they’re attached to the wood framing, if they’re attached really tightly, sometimes when they expand they make like a cracking sound. But what’s happening is the pipe is actually rubbing against the wood and making that sound and because they’re metal pipes they transmit the sound; it can become quite loud and quite annoying. If it really bothers you, you might want to disconnect the pipes from the wood and then reconnect them. You can use a bushing that surrounds it that actually allows the pipe to slide back and forth when it heats up and when it expands. But that’s what’s causing the sound.