Please help me solve mysterious tapping noise in wall!

[Stupidtapping]

Last year from Jan to March I was kept awake most of the night by an intermittent tapping noise coming from the top of the bedroom wall, just underneath the coving. It is an intermittent tap, not regular, that sounds similar to recordings of death watch beetle but again, less regular as sometimes there is just one or two taps and sometimes there are 20 quick taps in a row. I've been told it can't be deathwatch beetle as the house is modern, built in 2000.

I tried all sorts of things to figure out what it was, even bought an endoscope but before I could use that the tapping just stopped in March 2020.

Now it is back again and driving me crazy! I went into the loft and used the endoscope into the cavity wall space but it won't go down far enough into the wall to where the noise is coming from.

Does anyone have any ideas of what it could be, it is driving me crazy and I'm not getting any sleep.

There are no pipes or electrics in that area. I have put down sticky insect traps in the loft but caught nothing. I have put down cheese/crackers/peanut butter in the loft and it isn't touched. You can't hear the noise from the loft, only from the bedroom. It is in one specific place and doesn't moved around, difficult to locate exactly but in about a 30cm square area.

Does anyone have any ideas of what it could be before I abandon the bedroom and sleep on the sofa?

At least if it was a ghost I would know who to call...

Cold water tank and boiler are in the loft.

turn it off for 24 hours.

Any change?

photos would help.

is there a hot-water cylinder? what colour?

put your thumb over the hot-water tap in the bathroom. turn it on. can you hold back the flow?

now the cold one.

Sorry I've just seen this. Thanks @PigletJohn I will do this tomorrow and see what happens.

@LadyCatStark do you have a drainpipe from the roof guttering? That’s what the tapping was in our house, the drainpipe wasn’t fixed properly and when windy it would tap and as that was the corner of our bedroom it would keep me awake for hours.

Piglet John is probably the man to solve the mystery if it is plumbing related.

Another suggestion, it could be the aerial making the noise. Ours used to make a metallic tapping sound, even in just a slight breeze, like the sound of masts in the wind.

Does it sound like the first few seconds of this video?

It could be central heating - air bubbles.

I would try having a plumber in to bleed and balance the system.

Sorry I couldn't bring myself to turn off the boiler for 24hrs as I'm working from home and need heating and hot water.

The water pressure is fine. DH has recently bled the radiators. The hot and cold water flow is really strong and I can't hold back the flow of either in the tap.

What I don't understand is that there are no pipes in that bit of wall. And I hear the sound mostly at night when the boiler is off and has been off since 6pm.

It is intermittent but very quick little taps, sounds a bit metallic. Always in exactly the same place in the wall.

I have wondered about the aerial but the noise is much louder in the downstairs bedroom than in the loft which is also strange. We don't actually use the TV aerial so could get rid of it.

Hot water cylinder is in the airing cupboard and is green.

The sort of noise you describe is usually plumbing or heating related. Most commonly from a metal component expanding or contracting due to temperature change. Usually heard from radiators or hot pipes, can also be something exposed to sunlight, such as a canopy or railing

It can also be a water drip, sometimes from a boiler or unvented cylinder, more often from a tank or cistern that is slowly overfilling. During the day, when you are running taps and flushing WCs, the level keeps getting reduced and never reaches overflow height, but at night, or if the house is left empty, the water level increases enough to overflow. I have also seen this on a washing machine, which did not overflow when it was used daily, but did when it was not used for a week and slowly filled from a tiny drip.

We had tapping like this behind our hob. It was the hamster, which had escaped without anyone noticing. Took days before we caught him.

P.s. a green cylinder is low pressure, so I'm surprised you can't stop the flow with your thumb on the spout. Have you got weak thumbs?

Thanks @PigletJohn. What doesn't make sense to me is that all the boiler pipes etc are in the loft and not anywhere near this wall, and the ticking/tapping is only faintly noticeable in the loft and much louder in the bedroom. I suppose the noise may be travelling down somehow?

It also doesn't make sense that I've never heard it before Jan this year when we've lived here for 10 years, and it only lasted Jan to March then never heard it again until a few days ago.

We have a pressure gauge in the airing cupboard so can adjust the water pressure. We have modern mixer taps and if on full they seem extremely high pressure to me. Maybe my thumbs are too small but the water spurted everywhere when I tried to stop it!

I had this in my room in my parents' house as a teenager. It sounded like a clock ticking. The room was in an extension that was only about five years old at the time. It must have been an insect of some kind - there's more than one that makes the ticking noise.

photo of your pressure gauge and the cylinder would be interesting

also of any tanks and pipes in loft

is there an overflow pipe going through the wall?

It does seem to me that the noise coincides with cold weather when the heating will be on.

Thanks v much, I will attempt photos tomorrow, not done it before.

Yes there is a boiler overflow pipe on that wall, its not where the noise seems to be coming from but I suppose noise does travel oddly sometimes.

We have heating on all day from 7am to 6pm roughly October to April at around 18C.

look for any signs of wet wall or windowsill, or on the ground under this pipe.

If the location is far from pipes and guttering, and id it’s only in the coldest months, I wonder if it’s some sort of contracting metal inside the walls (something as tiny as a loose nail, or a flap of sheet metal) banging against something else. Insulation? Drywall? Flashing somewhere? Who knows what happened during construction in 2000, during boom times.

Honestly, I’d hammer out a hole in the Sheetrock from the bedroom to get at it. Somewhat drastic perhaps, but not as expensive to fix as my sanity!

Is it in the actual cavity? Does it sound deep in the wall as in not behind the plasterboard? My house is also about 20 years old, on the end walls they just dot and dabbed the plasterboard onto the block work so there is a very small space behind where the cables run.

If it sounds deeper and is in the cavity is it the wall ties? as in the metal thing they lay on top of the outer skin of brick and the inner skin that holds the two walls together?

Just with you saying it is metallic and at one place. Can you see any wall ties in the cavity at all? Have you moved the endoscope further across the wall to see if you can get down further along?

Pre covid I would just get my builder to knock a hole in the wall knowing that he would repair the block work and then a plasterer to skim it back to pretty, but then I have always been gung ho about these types of things

Yes it sounds exactly like something small and metallic moving around. I have been tempted to drill a small hole in the wall and put the endoscope in there.

From putting the endoscope down the cavity wall from the loft I can't see anything unusual. There are quite a lot of "rough" bits of cement from between the big grey bricks that stick out in various places.

Strangely enough there has been no tapping noise at all in the last 24 hrs. I wonder if I dislodged something moving the endoscope around?

Here is the pressure gauge.

Here is the side of the house. I have circled the area of wall where the tapping is coming from.

I actually just had the plumber over due to some radiators valves having failed and spoke to him about it. He doesn't think it is to do with the boiler (it was also serviced recently) and agreed that it could be wall ties in the cavity wall moving around.

But if that's the case what can I do about it? And strange that I couldn't see anything with the endoscope.

@Stupidtapping

It's at the top of the wall near the coving. It's an external wall, the side of the house so no guttering or anything like that above. It happens all night long when there is no heating on and there is no pipework there. A real mystery and really making me miserable!

Unfortunately I find earplugs really uncomfortable and can't sleep with them. I put some ocean waves noise on all last night in an attempt to drown out the tapping but I could still hear it.

I hate earplugs too but have had some success with these: www.happyears.co/uk/?gclid=CjwKCAiAoOz-BRBdEiwAyuvA6yIQqRQhGz9D_rT7Y_k83IZk4KfGMQgs63oBA49qNT5IEiNTvQmoOhoCLisQAvD_BwE they don’t block the sound completely but seem to muffle it in a way that stops it being a problem, and I am usually very sensitive to noise.

I think the pressure gauge is for the boiler and radiators, not for the tap water.

I'm sorry it's really not helpful in helpful in discovering the cause of the noise in your house, but every time I see the title of your thread, I get in my head.

Hope you find the cause soon!