Does vinyl tube make a difference for noise with larger diameter pipes?

[BrettDS]

I set up my new fish room one floor below my DT. I've got a large return pump to overcome the 16+ feet of head with 1 inch PVC pipe. The pump noise/vibration is transferring to the pipe and is pretty loud on the other side of the wall. It seems like the generally recommended solution is to install a short length of vinyl tube between the pump and the hard plumbing and I went out and got some 1.25" tube and the fittings to connect it to my 1" pipe. But frankly, the 1.25" vinyl tube is quite stiff and I'm not sure it's much less stiff than the PVC pipe itself.

Will this really make a difference or is this a better trick for smaller pumps where you can use smaller, more flexible tube? I hate to spend the time and money to redo that section of plumbing for little or no gain.

[anbosu]

I would try flex PVC before vinyl tubing.

Have you tried putting the pump on a mouse pad or something similar to dampen the vibrations?

[BrettDS]

I would try flex PVC before vinyl tubing.

Have you tried putting the pump on a mouse pad or something similar to dampen the vibrations?

the pump came with very soft rubber feet, so I don't think that putting it on a mousepad or anything would help there. It's definitely the vibrations transmitting through the pipe that I'm dealing with.

[KingTriton1]

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/white-soft-silicone-tubing-sold-by-the-foot.html

[Shawn O]

How long of a piece of vinyl tubing did you use? A short piece will probably still transfer a lot while a longer piece (say 3 feet) may transfer less.

[BrettDS]

How long of a piece of vinyl tubing did you use? A short piece will probably still transfer a lot while a longer piece (say 3 feet) may transfer less.

I haven't actually tried yet. I can probably only do about 12 inches without completely redoing my plumbing. It's just that the tube I got is quite rigid and I'm not sure how much of a difference it will make.

That silicone tubing looks interesting, but I'd need 1.25" ID and it looks like it only goes up to 1 inch. I might look around and see if I can find another source for silicone tube though.

[BrettDS]

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/white-soft-silicone-tubing-sold-by-the-foot.html



Thanks man, this turned out to be the perfect solution. Unfortunately, like I said above, I needed 1.25" tubing and BRS only sold up to 1", but after quite a bit of searching I finally found a seller on eBay with 1.25 and 1.5" silicone tubing. Unfortunately they shipped from china, so it took nearly a week to get here, but it finally arrived today.



Because of all the fittings I needed to step up from the 1" pipe to a 1.25" hose barb, then step back down on the other side I was only able to use about 6" of tubing, but even with the short section the tubing is soft enough that it makes a huge difference in the vibration and sound transferring to the pipe.



Unfortunately lowering the over all sound level seems to be a bit of a losing game... as soon as I quiet one thing I realize that there are other things making noise too. It started with the drain pipe, and once I was able to get that down to a reasonable level I realized the return pump was making a lot of noise. Now that I got the tube installed to quiet the return pump I discovered that the powerheads I have in my frag tank are also audible on the other side of the wall. But the good news is that each thing I'm discovering is making less noise than the last thing I fixed and at this point I think I can live with the noise level.

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/21/0d9d7c4427124aa251d98472d356b428.jpg