Structure problem

[pauly690]

I've been living in my 15yr old house for 3 years. The odd time when there's a temperature change we get a loud bang in the house. It's extreamly intense and you can actually feel it when your in the basement. It seems to be getting worse every year and happening more frequently. My basement is finished so I can't see the main beam or the foundation wall but I'm getting really conserned. What could this be?? Should I start ripping down drywall? I've got 1 beam across the house sitting on the foundation and 2 jack posts. I think there's a problem there somewhere and maybe it's not sitting down properly. There are no cracks in the drywall anywhere in the house but I am seeing drywall screw marks in the basement. 1 door upstaris really shifts between summer and winter as well.

BTW. The plaster in my living room hasn't fallen quite yet but I'm sure it will if this continues. I might get the building inspector over too.

[coffeegod]

If I were you... my girlfriend would say "LET'S SELL THE HOUSE!" Really though that would kind of freak me out too if it's that loud. I'd definitely be tearing out the drywall in key places to find out what it was. Unless there is some sort of crawlspace you could climb around in to check things out.

Can't exactly be a good thing.

[scuba_dave]

What type of heat? Forced hot water?
Pipes & ducts expand, could be a pipe or duct expanding against a method that was used to hold it in place
Once it gets to a certian point...bang....it slips some or hits something

[CR500]

What kind of temperature swings? I let my house drop to 58 F at night and it makes all kinds of popping noise. Some are loud enough to wake me up! I was very concerned but have yet to find any major structural problems. I did find a few things that weren't built correctly and have fixed them.

One of my favorite mods to do is to put a bead of construction adhesive on either side of every joist to glue it to the subfloor. My house was built in 1971 so it wasn't built with adhesive under the subfloor. This seems to have reduced the popping noise. The house is also loaded with nail-pops and some sagging sheetrock. As I fix the nail-pops the noise seems to decrease even more. I haven't been woken up by the noise in a while so I must be gaining on the problem!

[pauly690]

Well, it went off again last night. Scared the crap out of everyone. Seems to be more intence at the one end of the basement around the beam but its really hard to tell because its so loud. It sounds exactly like a fridge or something really heavy fell on the main floor. I have a drop cieling in the basement but where the beam and duct work is, its drywalled so I cant see anything. I put my hand over the top of the beam and its got a piece of 3/4" plywood about 3' wide on top of the beam, and the floor joists are sitting on top of that.

[CR500]

Wow, thats much worse than the noise at my house! As Scuba-Dave asked, what kind of HVAC?

Perhaps you have a large return air duct expanding and contracting.

[pauly690]

I dont think the bang is coming from the duct work. Theres no tin like sound to it. Its more of a deep rumble I just thought of something... last year we had trouble with the furnace... it's a mid eff. and the electronic ignitor wasn't lighting the gas. Eventually the furnace would stop injecting gas and the furnace would stay off. Maybe now it's spewing gas into the chimeny, haveing trouble lighting, and once it finally does... BANG!! I'm going to take a close look at this thing and see if I can find anything out. Like I said before too... it's always in the winter.

[joed]

That sounds like very possible cause.

[pushkins]

If that's the case then it would sound like a cannon going off.
As dangerous as that might be , it is kinda interesting to think of the sight from outside as the flue explodes the gasses, it would look just like a cannon.
I think the easiest way to tell might be to turn off your furnace for one night and see if it still happens, did it happen last summer when the furnace wasn't on ?

Look inside the flue ( CAREFULLY , maybe turn off the furnace while your doing it ) look for a thick black soot, this could be a sign of burning in the flue.