Water hammer - any cures?

[beanzontoast]

Any plumbers about? I think we have contracted what's known as 'water hammer'.

I disconnected the hot and cold water feeds from our old washing machine yesterday. The washing machine pipes connect to spurs off the hot and cold pipes under our sink and each spur has a valve that shuts it off, which I did obviously before removing the washing machine.

However, since disconnecting the old machine, whenever we shut a cold tap off suddenly somewhere in the house, there's a mighty 'clunk' sound. It's still happening today with the new washing machine connected up and working - in fact the washing machine valve itself opening and closing is causing the exact same clunk in the cold pipe. It's cold fill, by the way - there is no hot pipe on the new washing machine.

How do I cure the clunk? Is it a difficult job?

We have a condensing boiler now and I don't want to muck the water system up!

 

[numbnuts]

turn down your water pressure

 

[slowmotion]

http://waterhammerarresters.co.uk/domestic.html

 

[beanzontoast]

Hmm... what's got me thinking we shouldn't need the extra equipment is that until I closed the valves to the washing machine pipes, we had never had this. Nothing's actually changed structurally about the plumbing setup. Isn't the equipment intended for installations where there's a long standing problem?