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No hot water past the valve at top of hot water heater-?-

3K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  Daulton 
#1 ·
I've just received four calls from my kids tonight. I've been working on their plumbing and discovered their one inch line into their house was very clogged with rust. When I put on a new anti siphen valve I loosened a lot of rust into the system. I guess I own all the problems related to plumbing now.:huh: This is a 1925 era home that is like the Winchester Mystery House.

Tonight they have no hot water to wash the baby and I guess they will be taking cold showers in the morning.

I'm at a loss here. They have an extremely hot water heater and the burner is still going. The pipe from the heater to the valve on top is hot. After the valve the pipe is cold. He can hear water flowing when he turns the valve off then on.

There is water flow from the hot water outlets throughout the house but no hot water.

There is a hot water valve on the front of the house, (?). There is water flow there but the water is cold. Today when I opened it to wash out any accumulated rust, there was hot water. There was hot water to the washing machine tonight.

Is this a hot water heater problem or is there some sort of clog in the hot water valve at the top of the hot water heater?

Another anoying problem is that the anti siphen valve makes a lot of noise. Any remedy for that?

Any suggestion or recomendation will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
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#2 ·
I should mention that I put a new cartridge into the kitchen faucet yesterday and worked on the single lever on it today. There was hot water in the house at that point.
Could it be that cold water is getting into the hot water system from the kitchen faucet?
I will try turning off the water lines to the faucet in the morning and see if that fixes it.

Thanks for your reply.
 
#3 ·
If you hear water running past/thru the valve, it has to be going somewhere????????? and if the pipe is hot on the downstream side, the water is hot. Since you broke rust free, it will lodge where ever there is a narrowing, and there are a lot of places for that to happen. Good luck.
 
#4 ·
Yep. I bet that "this old house" has a lot of obsolete galvanized supply pipes. As you know, these are notorious for scaling up inside over time and eventually clogging up completely, usually starting at the end nearest a fixture.
Looks like someone is going to be replacing supply lines (only solution to clogged old galvanized). I would go with PEX, if it were me.
Good Luck!
Mike
 
#5 ·
Well I fixed the problem...
When I checked the hot water line running from the house hot water heater under ground to the garage it was flowing but no valves were open.
The sinkhole between the garage and the cottage was my first clue. My son in law, for the last seven years had shoveled dirt into it rather than dig to find out what was happening.

I dug literally a ton of dirt to find that the water line was broken at one of the PVC elbows, (?). For some reason the previous owner had put a “u” shaped configuration in the water line, which finally failed. I removed that and put in a straight union and it didn’t cause a problem.

Also, the two-inch sewer line was broken in four places. The gas line was deflected but not broken.

I have a concern in that the hot water line is the line that was running during the problem and PVC was what I found underground. I know your not supposed to use PVC for hot water but I don’t know the reason.
Anyway we fixed what was broken and I hope we will never have to dig that area up again.

I put in a ball valve in the hot water tee, which will allow them to blow out any sediment in the hot water lines if they need to.

The sprinkle system manifold I started with in the first place is finished and works. It will be up to him to connect the wires on his old timer and fix his sprinklers…maybe.

Done! Thanks for your comments and suggestions.
 
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