Sioux Chief 652-A Water Arrestor

Used these to replace the old type AAA Water hammer arresters. They stopped the water hammer at the wash machine that was going throughout the house. We needed the extra volume to compensate and eliminate the hammer effect. Well made. The piston works well and should last a long time. A good value for the money. It took numerous fittings to replace the old setup. But one of the previous reviewers showed a good way of accomplishing this and he had pictures.

Works great on my sprinkler system,stopped the water hammer

I’ve been using Sioux Chief Mini-resters (model 660-H) to handle my washing machine water hammer. They work OK…but only seem to last 18-24 months. I wanted a longer lasting solution so I can stop replacing the Mini-resters. Inspired by another Amazon review (house guy), I built my own hammer arresters using these larger Sioux Chief 652-A units. My solution requires soldering…so this idea won’t be for everyone. But if you can solder and are replacing an existing set of Sioux Chief Mini-resters, check out how I built a larger version (see images). The part numbers are in the images. You have to un-solder the copper portion from the 660-H mini-resters to re-use them. Don’t cut it off because you will need the entire length of that copper section. Then assemble the new arrestors as shown. These are working well and I hope they will outlast the Mini-resters by a long time. If/when they stop working, I can just replace the 652-A air chambers instead of replacing the entire Mini-rester.

My old house has the usual "air chamber" type water hammer arresting pipe extensions above every faucet and fixture. But I recently switched the house from a private well to the village water supply, and with this came much more water pressure and also greater flow. I started to have water hammer issues where I never had before, mainly in a few places that had automatic valves (e.g. the cloths washer and the outdoor faucet that has a timer that controls watering; in those places the valves close quickly. I was faced with upgrading my existing 'pipe extension' type air chambers in hopes of eliminating the water hammer, or switching to proper water hammer arrestors. These are devices that are essentially little shock absorbers that work on the water in a pipe, and which cannot be "water logged", and thus can be expected to work for a long time without attention or gradual degradation in performance. I decided that if I was going to cut into pipes and do soldering, that I would go for the better solution. I chose Sioux Chief because they seem to be one of the major manufacturers of these products. But I learned that while many stores (Home Depot, etc) carry these products, that they are actually supposed to be selected based on static water pressure and actual water flow at the location (faucet) in question. I bought (on Amazon) two inexpensive meters to measure pressure and flow...see my other reviews of those products. I reported my findings to Sioux Chief via their inquiry form, and their technical support advised on which model arrestor I should use for best performance in my situation. The 652-A arrestor reviewed here is the one they recommended for the outdoor faucet, while a different model was deemed best for the clothes washer. The arrestors of any given size can be purchased with various connections, such as basic soldering type (the small end of the arrestor is sized like a copper pipe end, and you solder directly to the arrestor), plus screw fittings and another kind of fitting that I had never seen before. I chose the regular screw fitting. My work involved cutting the existing copper pipe just above the "tee" where the existing air chamber pipe extended up from the faucet, and soldering on a pipe fitting of the correct size. Then I just screwed the new arrestor onto that fitting, and the job was done. I thought this was preferable to soldering directly onto the arrestor, since excess heat can possibly damage the internal plunger or O-rings or whatever. I don't solder pipes professionally and figured that I might heat the arrestor more than a professional plumber would. I also like being able to quickly remove and/or replace the arrestor without doing any more soldering. I have not noted any more water hammer since I installed these arrestors, so I think they are doing their job.

Perfect fit easy to install stopped the knocking

I don't usually write product reviews. But, I am very impressed by these water hammer arrestors. When our sprinkler valves would shut off, the line between the kitchen sink and the ice maker in the fridge would rattle with some fury. The sprinkler valves are a long distance from the kitchen and I was worried about the potential for pipe damage. As our copper pipes are in the slab, a leak would be a pain to fix. Installing the 652-As took just a few minutes as I already had pipe Ts in the lines. I installed one in the front yard near the sprinkler valves and one in the back yard next to a sprinkler valve. After installing the 652-As, our water hammer issue completely disappeared and our pipes are silent when the sprinkler valves close. Only thing I regret is not installing these years ago.

Bought a new GE washer, dryer combo and the pipes in the wall were banging a lot. After purchasing some off brand smaller arrestors that did not work I purchased these large ones hoping they would help. They do help a little bit better but still get pipe banging in the wall.

So happy I bought and installed this item. I have an automatic flushing toilet and every time it flushed I had three really loud water hammer thuds. It was so bad I would have to turn the toilet off at night so it wouldn't wake up the whole house in the morning if someone used the toilet. Luckily I have a crawl space to access my plumbing under the house. I sweated in a 1/2" FIPT fitting right near my toilet supply line to install this arrestor and it made a huge difference. No more water hammer and no more waking everyone up hearing those thuds every morning! If you have access to your plumbing, I definitely recommend the threaded version of this as opposed to a sweat in version so you can still easily replace it if it ever fails.