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Noisy Eheim 2213

The last time I checked no one over here had one. I just assumed they may be available elsewhere? They’re made in PRC as far as I know.
 
Well I recently bought Eheim Ecco Pro 130, having had read a lot of reviews how silent it was, to replace rather noisy Hydor Prime 10 in my living room.
Unfortunately, that Eheim Pro turned out to be not as silent as I expected, hardly a bit quieter than Hydor (but cost twice as much). No rattling sound, but quite audible humming noise.

I think the quality of Eheim filters is now just a legend.
 
Sergey said:
Well I recently bought Eheim Ecco Pro 130, having had read a lot of reviews how silent it was, to replace rather noisy Hydor Prime 10 in my living room.
Unfortunately, that Eheim Pro turned out to be not as silent as I expected, hardly a bit quieter than Hydor (but cost twice as much). No rattling sound, but quite audible humming noise.

I think the quality of Eheim filters is now just a legend.
Click to expand...

Hi @Sergey

It's obviously the luck of the draw as I also have an Eheim Ecco Pro 130 and it is very quiet. But there is also another possible explanation. Have you tried sitting the filter on a spongy layer of foam if that's possible in your setup? This will isolate the filter from the surface on which it sits. There will always be some low-frequency vibration from a filter because of the motor, impeller, etc. This gets coupled to the cabinet in which the filter is being used. And it can then cause resonance. Might be worth a try.

Anon
 
Hey @jaypeecee

jaypeecee said:
Hi @Sergey

It's obviously the luck of the draw as I also have an Eheim Ecco Pro 130 and it is very quiet. But there is also another possible explanation. Have you tried sitting the filter on a spongy layer of foam if that's possible in your setup? This will isolate the filter from the surface on which it sits. There will always be some low-frequency vibration from a filter because of the motor, impeller, etc. This gets coupled to the cabinet in which the filter is being used. And it can then cause resonance. Might be worth a try.
Click to expand...

Well I tried lifting the filter with my hands so that it didn't touch anything, readjusted hoses, reassembled the impeller chamber - all to no effect in noise reduction. The noise comes from the filter head itself. Here's the small video I recorded with the iPhone's noise meter app (you can see the noise level at the upper left corner):

.

To an observer, the filter sounds like a desktop computer from nineties. I don't know, maybe it's a normal noise level from a filter, but my expectations were that it was supposed to be virtually silent, as may reviews said, and that was the purpose for spending money on it, hence my frustration.
 
I’ve heard of folks hanging the filter from inside the cabinet and adding foam where the hoses go through as well, all to no avail. If you have that humming noise it seems nothing will stop it. Sound proofing the cabinet itself may be a possibility but let’s face it, it shouldn’t be necessary.
 
I removed the cover from the head of my Classic to have a look inside. I couldn’t help noticing the nice little sound amplifying chamber moulded into the head! Quite what this was originally intended for is a mystery to me. It has a couple of slots inside and two holes at the top that could be used for retaining screws? I’ve packed some high density foam into it and it has reduced the noise a bit. I’ll try a proper wet test with hoses when I get a minute.
 

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Quick update. It’s been running for a few weeks now and it’s very much quieter than it was. Inside a decent cabinet I doubt you’d hear it at all. It’s an easy fix once you know. If I had any to hand I would have poured RTV rubber into that chamber to set but the high density foam has done the job. It’s only a guess but I can’t help thinking that little chamber was originally designed to hold some kind of circuit board, perhaps for a foreign market? It would be nice to see what the ones for the USA look like under the cover.
 
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