Plumbing: humming pipes

Self-tutoring about plumbing: the tutor mentions humming pipes and what apparently stopped it.

The following is according to my understanding.

For years, when someone would turn off a tap, sometimes one would hear pipes hum elsewhere in the house. The hum didn’t seem to come from a specific place, but was sometimes quite loud. Opening a tap would stop it again. I looked around the Internet, but couldn’t come up with a diagnosis, back then.

Then, another thing happened: as I recall, one of the toilets wouldn’t stop refilling. One of the seals on the fill valve, I supposed, was worn out. Small wonder: said toilet was over 20 years old, and I didn’t recall its fill valve ever being replaced. I went down and bought a universal one.

Removing the old fill valve, I noticed one of its seals was almost completely gone: only a powdery remnant of it remained. Hence, there was plastic touching plastic, which likely led to vibration that caused the humming.

The new fill valve was fairly easy to install; perhaps that’s for another post.

As I recall, once the new fill valve was installed, the humming stopped. It’s been months since I replaced the fill valve; I can’t remember the last time I heard pipes hum.

Interesting, eh?