How would a plumber go about diagnosing water hammer?
There are five pipes that go up to the attic, including one for a current cold water tank and one for a decommissioned and empty hot water tank. We sometimes get knocking sounds, which can occasionally be really loud. The source of the noise can be anywhere from the kitchen to the attic although presumably it's the same pipe each time. It sometimes triggers the heating pump on the combi boiler, and if I jerk the cold kitchen tap on and off it can knock loudly between the tap and the boiler (only about 1m away). Boiler engineer thought this was just the boiler being very sensitive to changes in pressure.
How would a plumber approach this, and could it turn into a lengthy (i.e. expensive) process without necessarily getting the problem fixed?
A related point - the pipe going up to the old hot water tank, how could I find out if that is still linked to the live water main, i.e. a dead leg which was just capped off in the attic?
There are five pipes that go up to the attic, including one for a current cold water tank and one for a decommissioned and empty hot water tank. We sometimes get knocking sounds, which can occasionally be really loud. The source of the noise can be anywhere from the kitchen to the attic although presumably it's the same pipe each time. It sometimes triggers the heating pump on the combi boiler, and if I jerk the cold kitchen tap on and off it can knock loudly between the tap and the boiler (only about 1m away). Boiler engineer thought this was just the boiler being very sensitive to changes in pressure.
How would a plumber approach this, and could it turn into a lengthy (i.e. expensive) process without necessarily getting the problem fixed?
A related point - the pipe going up to the old hot water tank, how could I find out if that is still linked to the live water main, i.e. a dead leg which was just capped off in the attic?