How can I locate and solve this water hammer problem, and what are its effects on the human body?

Question

I live in an 180 sq.ft. single room apartment with kitchen area, and is pretty much a simple box like shape.

For a year, I have heard noises that sounds like a rod banging in the wall and its vibrations are felt throughout the room. The noise is echoed in the room when I close the door and one small window.

Even when the door and windows are open, the noise can be heard as an echoed sound, making it difficult to determine where the actual plumbing pipe(s) are located, i.e: either in left, right, front, back or top wall(above my roof is terrace so assuming an pipe passes from top wall).
The echoing of noise is creating problem to identify the location of sound. I put my ear to the wall and try different locations to identify the location of pipe(s) but failed due to echoing effect of sound and the vibration.

The management of the building where I stay is not concerned about it, and the people here do not think it is a big enough problem to be concerned about, since they only hear it for 4-5 minutes.

But hearing it for 8-9 hrs a day creates a problem for me. The vibration is in the range of 0.2MMI to 0.7MMI (Mercalli Intensity Scale). Will this vibration affect my health?

When I hear the noise, I checked the machine which pumps the water in the above water tank located on terrace, but that was switched off at that time. I checked 4-5 times and everytime it was off, so I do not understand what could be the problem. What would be the cost if I call a professional plumber to solve the problem? My area of residence is Mumbai, India.

The water tank that is located on terrace has circular valves which when opened, the water flows to each room via pipes that are outside the wall as gravitational forces act on it.

How can I solve this problem?

Answer 1

The best recommendation when you cannot get any satisfaction from the building owner / manager is to MOVE to another place. When you rent it is not your place to be doing things like getting in a professional to work on things like the plumbing.

If you do get ready to move now you know some more what to be looking for and asking questions about before you commit to the new abode.

Answer 2

Health advice is really out of scope for this discussion; you should be asking your doctor or s specialist in environmental health.

Since you can't modify the plumbing without the landlord's permission, there really isn't a lot of advice we can give you other than live with it, buy earplugs, or move...