Eureka!!!!!!!!!!!

Finishing our own basement has had its ups and downs. For over a year, I've had a problem that's been plaguing me. One of our walls in the basement makes a distinctive banging noise in the early morning hours, usually on the dot of 5:49 a.m. At first I thought a piece of framing that I'd installed was shifting so I cut a hole in the drywall and tried a couple things to fix it. And then I went downstairs in the early morning hours to listen the wall to see if it'd bang. While sitting there at 5:49 a.m., the wall that I was positive was the culprit, didn't make a sound but the laundry room made the distintive knock. Puzzled, I decided to abandon my wall and concentrate my search in the laundry room. Last week, I went down and listened and determined that the south wall was not making the noise and that it had to be the north or east walls. So this morning, Merril and I went down and listened and determined that the east wall makes the knock. Satisfied that our search moving forward, I went back to bed. Merril was meeting his brother to go mountain biking at 6:00 so he left to meet up with him. As Merril walked outside, he saw the sprinklers had just finished watering the front lawn. While driving, he started to putting together this puzzle!

The water supply line to the house is a 1-inch flex pipe that comes into the basement and runs right behind the east wall in the laundry room. Since the water pipe was there before I framed the walls for the laundry room, we neglected to attach the pipe to the framing in any way. So when the sprinklers valve would kick off in the morning, the pipe would jiggle, sometimes called water hammer, and knock on the framing. That's the reason the knock happened at the exact same time every day!!!

When he came home and told me about his theory, I ran out to the sprinkler timer and set the sprinklers to 1 minute. I ran down to the basement and waited. Sure enough, the wall knocked just as predicted!!

I am filled with peals of excitement because it's going to be an easy fix!! All I have to do is knock a few holes in the drywall and secure the pipe to the framing. I'll patch the holes and be ready for paint!! And since I followed the advice of a few basement finishing websites, I took a ton of pictures of the framing and electrical before the walls were closed up. Therefore, I know exactly were that pipe runs and just where to punch the drywall. Here's a picture of the stinker! It's the large white flex pipe. I feel so wonderful today and have called Merril a genius about 10 times already!! Wahoo!!