Draft and Creaks

Cougars

Hi,

I live in a house which is less than 3 years old. In our sitting room there is a circular air vent approx 9mm diameter, which obviously lets in a huge draft and can be quite noisy. The real problem though is that if it is anyway windy and the door to the sitting room is closed there are alot of loud creaking noises coming from the roof of the room.
The roof is hollow core concrete and this noise does not transfer to the bedroom upstairs and does not appear in any other room.
I can recreate the creaking at any time in the sitting room just by opening/closing the sitting room door.

This is very annoying, does anyone have any idea what is going on, or how I could fix it?
Also I would love to block the vent, but I dont know how to open the vent short of ruining the whole wall, any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help.

bbam

As ever be careful blocking up the vent... In a sitting room chances are you have a fire, gas or solid fuel.... these really need good ventilation for safety reasons.
You might fit a controlable vent or similar to reduce the effect but still allow some ventilation...

Qwerty?

Cougars wrote: »

Hi,

I live in a house which is less than 3 years old. In our sitting room there is a circular air vent approx 9mm diameter, which obviously lets in a huge draft and can be quite noisy. The real problem though is that if it is anyway windy and the door to the sitting room is closed there are alot of loud creaking noises coming from the roof of the room.
The roof is hollow core concrete and this noise does not transfer to the bedroom upstairs and does not appear in any other room.
I can recreate the creaking at any time in the sitting room just by opening/closing the sitting room door.

This is very annoying, does anyone have any idea what is going on, or how I could fix it?
Also I would love to block the vent, but I dont know how to open the vent short of ruining the whole wall, any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help.

If it's hollowcore, there is a good chance you have metal suspended ceilings below it. This is whats moving when you open and close the door, as you are causing a change in the air volume of the room.

However if it is making the same noises during a windy day try blocking of the vent temporarily to see if that's the cause. Otherwise there may be air getting into the void between the suspended ceiling and the Hollowcore and causing the ceiling to creak.

Cougars

Thanks,

I blocked up the vent (I will look for a controllable vent to replace current one as we have an open fire in the sitting room).

Blocking the vent has made no difference to the creaking unfortunately. Is there anything else I can do, or a tradesman I could call? The creaking really is very loud and virtually constant if there is any wind at all.

Qwerty?

There must be an air leak above the suspended ceiling so.

Turn off the mains power;) and then unscrew the ceiling rose to see if you can feel a breeze coming down at the point where the cables come down through the ceiling. If you do I don't have an easy solution except possibly take the ceiling down or live with it

bkb

Cougars,
I think I have the same issue. When it blows outside, the noise of the creaking in our sitting room is extremely annoying.

It has been suggested to me that the fittings holding the suspended ceiling up are not the correct type for the grid that the ceiling is applied to.

A work around (that I haven't tried yet) is to bore an internal vent between my sitting room and hall. This (in theory) is meant to act as an escape route for the air coming in to the room.

Cougars

Thanks bkb,

Let me know how you get on if you do that, it makes sense and sounds better then taking the ceiling down.