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I have one of these vacuum breakers on my outdoor hose faucet.

Every time I turn it on, it creates a loud noise in the form of a hum or drone I can hear throughout the house. While I have been able to find many similar questions on the web, as good as my google-fu may be, I can't find any definitive answers to fix it...

I don't think it's "water-hammer" because the pipes aren't vibrating or shaking. So I believe it is just the valve itself. This just hooks up to a standard hose with a normal sprayer/wand on it.

Actual setup below: enter image description here

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Every time I left the outdoor spigots on (all have vacuum breakers), I would hear a whining sound when I turned on and off several inside water faucets. This always let me know that I, or someone had left an outdoor spigot on. But, it got kind of annoying after 10 years. I had no idea it was related to having vacuum breakers on my outdoor spigots. Recently one the vacuum breakers started leaking when the water was turned on, so I tried to remove it. It was rusted to the spigot, so I had to drill the screw out and remove it. Spigot now doesn't leak and the humming sound is gone when I turn on my indoor faucets. Amazing that simply removing the vacuum breaker brings such peace. I have since removed all three vacuum breakers and life is so nice now. Guess they are required when selling a home, but I don't plan on selling anytime soon. Just won't be hooking up chemicals to a hose so I don't run the chance of contaminating the water supply, but otherwise a much enjoyed "fix".

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    You don't need chemicals to pose a backsiphonage risk to a water supply -- a hose left in a kiddie pool, puddle, etc can cause backsiphonage contamination under the right circumstances...
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Jul 29, 2018 at 17:31
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    Hello, and welcome to Stack Exchange. You're right; a problem would be rare, but then again if do DO have a problem you'll likely be contaminating the whole neighborhood.
    – Daniel Griscom
    Jul 29, 2018 at 21:58
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I switched my vacuum breakers to those long frost-free hose bibs a couple years ago and haven't had an issue since. So these cheapo vacuum breakers are absolutely useless for $10 and a proper hose-bib is only about $20-$30.

enter image description here

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I had the same issue, whenever the water was on I had a whining noise throughout the house. I removed it, whining went away. Well now I'm having another issue where it feels like someone is banging on the side of my house, scares the crap out of me in the middle of the night. I'm assuming it's the water hammer thingy-my-jigy, so I'll have to go pick up a new one and if the whining noise is there I'll deal with it rather than being awake in the middle of the night. Hope this helps you some

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  • Most city by-laws require a vacuum breaker on any faucet that could come into contact with dirty water (hoses, washing machine, etc.). Fine is up to $5K per infraction in my city. I'd prefer to have a fix other than "take it off".
    – HodlDwon
    Jun 4, 2016 at 0:47

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