Balancing valves are essential to maintaining balanced equilibrium in a water system, but a common troubleshooting complaint is that they are making too much noise. If the balancing valves in your water system are making an excessive amount of noise, a number of factors could be to blame. Troubleshooting and solving these problems is simple.
The following three steps cover the most common causes of noisy balancing valves:
- Check the Delta P pressure indicator to see the pressure across the automatic balancing valve. Delta pressure, commonly abbreviated as “Delta P,” is the change in pressure of the water after it runs through the balancing valve. It measures the difference in water pressure before and after the valve.If Delta P is at the max, this indicates that pressure is changing greatly upon passing through the valve – meaning that the downstream side of the balancing valve needs to be throttled to reduce the differential pressure. This pressure should be below 32 psi.
- Check to see that air has been purged from the system. Excess air can cause a clicking noise inside the valve. If your system uses WB or WS valves, you may need to purge the air from both sides of the mid-plate.
- Check to see whether you have two automatic balancing valves coupled together very closely. If two of these kinds of valves are close-coupled together, they can create pulsing and noise. The only way to solve this issue would be to uncouple them and rework the system.
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