Water Heater blew, shower issue

[strnjss]

don't know what section on this forum best fits this post, but...

After only 7 years (2 years after warranty expired of course) the bottom of the water heater rusted out and flooded the basement.

It's all turned off awaiting the supply houses to open on monday when the water heater guy can get a replacement.

Anyway, we have to get through the weekend with no hot water, which would be ok, I don't mind taking a cold shower in the summer.

The problem is, I can't even do that, due to the anti-scald valve in my shower!

No matter how I turn on the faucet in the shower ( the whole cold-hot range), I get barely a trickle of water out of it.

Without the water coming into the valve on the hot side, it won't let any cold water in on the other side!

Since all the water on the hot side goes through the water heater first, I can't turn the water on to it without another basement flood.

Does anyone know if there's a way to bypass or get around this?

I've seen some with adjusters inside them, but mine either doesn't have that, or it's buried deep in the wall.

The other thing I was thinking, was maybe somehow connect the cold water to the hot water side of a sink somewhere in the house, pressurizing the hot water pipes in the house. With the valve turned off at the hot water heater, it wouldn't back up into it, and the pressure would allow the anti-scald valve to allow water through.

However, that seems like a lot of trouble, and trying to find the proper connections and stuff. I don't know if that's a good plan...

Am I just stuck showering by filling buckets in the sink for the next few days, or does someone have a good idea on what I can do here?

Thanks, I appreciate any thoughts!

 

[scott37300]

How is the lines supplied to the hot water heater, are the screwed on or soldered? If screwed on you can unscrew them and get a ****** and splice them together to bypass the water heater. If it is soldered you can cut them at the water heater, move the water heater out of the way and then get a 12-18" long flexable hose with compression fitting on it to splice them together.

Otherwise just use the hose outside for the weekend!

 

[chris fresh]

shut the main off to the house,disconnect the cold coming into the hot water heater,disconnect the hot coming out of the water heater.connect the two together.your gonna have to disconnect the hotwater heater any way to swap it out.this way you will have water thru out the whole house,just won't have hot.

 

[tatra]

simple solution , visit the local pool for a swim.............

 

[strnjss]

Thanks everyone. That's probably too much trouble to do all that just for a couple of days. My pipes are soldered, If I had to go a week or more, I might give it a shot though. But the guy should be here monday. I appreciate the suggestions though. Haha tatra, I would feel dirtier after swimming in the pools around here than if I didn't shower!

What really annoys me is how short a life this water heater had. 7 years should not be enough time to rust out like that. I know some have that sacrificial anode, but mine doesn't since it's oil fired.

You would think someone would engineer a water heater tank that would last.

I mean copper water supply pipes last almost indefinitely without corroding out, so why not make a water heater where the inside is coated with copper!?

It may be expensive, but it would probably last forever. Im sure there are dozens of ways they could make them last.

Instead, we're stuck with planned-failure models designed to fail after only a few years.

anyway, thanks again for the help everyone!

 

[Biomed]

You would think someone would engineer a water heater tank that would last.

They do! It's called a Marathon water heater and is made of polyethylene. Has a lifetime warranty.

More information is available here:
http://www.marathonheaters.com/aboutus.html

 

[Frank The Plumber]

Go to the home center store, buy 2, 3/4 sharkbites, 2, 3/4 x 6 *******, a washing machine hose connector kit. Slice the feed into the heater after the valve and in a place where you are not costing yourself a lot of extra money to correct your temp fix. Pop on your shark bites pop in your ******* attach the wash machine hose from one to the other, open the cold feed and ala peanut butter sandwiches we have a fed hot and shower ability.
A guy who can't get a heater on a Sat morning is either very rural or Saturday impaired, I would have done one for you at 8am on a saturday. He could have at least done the jumper for you. It would only take a pro 10 minutes to make you semi happy.
If he shows up on Monday with a big box available model I would consider seeking a new plumber.

 

[chris fresh]

Thanks everyone. That's probably too much trouble to do all that just for a couple of days. My pipes are soldered, If I had to go a week or more, I might give it a shot though. But the guy should be here monday. I appreciate the suggestions though. Haha tatra, I would feel dirtier after swimming in the pools around here than if I didn't shower!

What really annoys me is how short a life this water heater had. 7 years should not be enough time to rust out like that. I know some have that sacrificial anode, but mine doesn't since it's oil fired.

You would think someone would engineer a water heater tank that would last.

I mean copper water supply pipes last almost indefinitely without corroding out, so why not make a water heater where the inside is coated with copper!?

It may be expensive, but it would probably last forever. Im sure there are dozens of ways they could make them last.

Instead, we're stuck with planned-failure models designed to fail after only a few years.

anyway, thanks again for the help everyone!

watch him while he does it,so you learn something.this way if it happens again down the road,you can fix it and save yourself the money.it's alot easier to learn something as easy as that,then to keep dropping your pants

 

[oilslick]

Fix it yourself, its easy I did my first when I was 16 and parents were out of town, the worst could happen is you make a mistake and learn from it, unless its electric and you fail to turn off power!!!

 

[strnjss]

They do! It's called a Marathon water heater and is made of polyethylene. Has a lifetime warranty.

More information is available here:
http://www.marathonheaters.com/aboutus.html

That's the coolest thing I've ever seen! If this wasn't such a sudden failure and we had a little time, I would definitely look into that. But 5-10 years from now, when the new one fails, I will so be getting one of those things!

Edit: however, after looking at their site, they don't seem to have dealers in MA yet, so hopefully by then they will.

Go to the home center store, buy 2, 3/4 sharkbites, 2, 3/4 x 6 *******, a washing machine hose connector kit. Slice the feed into the heater after the valve and in a place where you are not costing yourself a lot of extra money to correct your temp fix. Pop on your shark bites pop in your ******* attach the wash machine hose from one to the other, open the cold feed and ala peanut butter sandwiches we have a fed hot and shower ability.
A guy who can't get a heater on a Sat morning is either very rural or Saturday impaired, I would have done one for you at 8am on a saturday. He could have at least done the jumper for you. It would only take a pro 10 minutes to make you semi happy.
If he shows up on Monday with a big box available model I would consider seeking a new plumber.

Thanks, if something happens and we have to go past monday without the water heater, I'll try that. The guy we have doing it is from the oil company who delivers our heating oil. He seems like a good guy.

The reason he couldn't get one is because he wants to get it from a supply house instead of like Home Depot or something. Not sure exactly why. I would hope it would be cheaper. He tried to call them yesterday, but they all close early on fridays during the summer or something. He was very apologetic about it.

He's also going to service the oil fired motor part of it too, and probably replace the thermostat which hasn't worked in years.

It all happened so fast yesterday that I didn't even think to tell him about the shower part.

watch him while he does it,so you learn something.this way if it happens again down the road,you can fix it and save yourself the money.it's alot easier to learn something as easy as that,then to keep dropping your pants

Fix it yourself, its easy I did my first when I was 16 and parents were out of town, the worst could happen is you make a mistake and learn from it, unless its electric and you fail to turn off power!!!

I do want to watch him, not just to learn how to do it, but because I find it really interesting too.

I kind of know how to do it in terms of which steps to take, but where I've never done it before, I'm not very confident in my abilities to do it myself yet.

I had one guy once who came in to service the water heater, and almost burned our house down. The second guy that came after the fire department tagged the water heater said the other guy installed the wrong oil valves or something like that.

So like attaching the water pipes and stuff would be easy for me to do, but I have no clue what do do when it comes to the other stuff.

 

[Coach James]

The thermostat on your water heater hasn't worked in years and it has an oil fired motor on it?

What am I understanding incorrectly?

You have something like this?
http://www.bockwaterheaters.com/products/oil_water_heaters.html

Coach

 

[strnjss]

The thermostat on your water heater hasn't worked in years and it has an oil fired motor on it?

What am I understanding incorrectly?

You have something like this?
http://www.bockwaterheaters.com/products/oil_water_heaters.html

Coach

Yes it looks just like that. I don't know if I have the terminology right. What I meant was the temperature control doesn't work correctly. No matter what we adjust it to (the min/max settings), it's always scalding hot. We've been ok with it all this time, but since they are coming to replace it anyway, it's better to just have them fix that too, since they are going to reuse just about everything but the tank. Save some energy heating the water too.

 

[strnjss]

I just figured out the easiest way to get the hot water pipes full! All I had to do was open up the hot side of the sink faucet in the bathroom as well as the cold side at the same time. With no pressure on the hot side the cold water is free to flow through into the hot water pipes (with the shutoff valve to the water heater shut off at the house supply side it doesn't flow into the busted tank).

I cut a rubber piece to fit inside the faucet so that the water doesn't come out the spout, so now all the cold water from the bathroom sink is flowing into the hot side of the sink, supplying the house with water on that side too. Now the shower works with pressure on that side and everything!

I can live with it being cold.

So basically I have:

Hot side of sink open
Cold side of sink open
Rubber piece preventing water coming out faucet in cartridge


I can't believe I didn't think of it before.

 

[Frank The Plumber]

Hmm. I am sitting here taking all of this in and Sherlock Holmes ing it a bit.
Here is what I have so far follow me.

He has a heater that is oil fired.
The thermostat was faulty, so it either was not able to climb or it was stuck full on?
He is able to close a valve on his hot side of his heater and isolate the tank so it does not leak.????? Shouldn't be able to should he?

You are not supposed to have a valve on the hot water valve, only the cold.
Given the scenario that you had there, I am not so certain that you had a tank failure as that you may have had a pressure rupture situation.

A water heater has the potential force of 2 sticks of dynamite as a steam bomb. This happens inadvertantly more than you would want to think.
If you were to have a valve on each side of the heater and turn them off and have a faulty or plugged Temperature and pressure relief valve you essentially have a potential bomb a steam bomb. A thermal expansion event.

In some cases a home and it's occupants will be extremely lucky and have an older thinner tank that simply ruptures before it can get enough force potential pressure to cause great harm.

I would ask you to please investigate the possibility of this being the case in your situation. If you have any doubts please post some pictures of your current install. Yes I am paranoid, you can't be harmed by it now because it is inoperable. However let's make sure we don't do a hookup with a fresh new tank and have a bad day.

Thanks.

 

[strnjss]

Hmm. I am sitting here taking all of this in and Sherlock Holmes ing it a bit.
Here is what I have so far follow me.

He has a heater that is oil fired.
The thermostat was faulty, so it either was not able to climb or it was stuck full on?
He is able to close a valve on his hot side of his heater and isolate the tank so it does not leak.????? Shouldn't be able to should he?

You are not supposed to have a valve on the hot water valve, only the cold.
Given the scenario that you had there, I am not so certain that you had a tank failure as that you may have had a pressure rupture situation.

A water heater has the potential force of 2 sticks of dynamite as a steam bomb. This happens inadvertantly more than you would want to think.
If you were to have a valve on each side of the heater and turn them off and have a faulty or plugged Temperature and pressure relief valve you essentially have a potential bomb a steam bomb. A thermal expansion event.

In some cases a home and it's occupants will be extremely lucky and have an older thinner tank that simply ruptures before it can get enough force potential pressure to cause great harm.

I would ask you to please investigate the possibility of this being the case in your situation. If you have any doubts please post some pictures of your current install. Yes I am paranoid, you can't be harmed by it now because it is inoperable. However let's make sure we don't do a hookup with a fresh new tank and have a bad day.

Thanks.

What I have is a oil fired water heater. It has a supply line of water where cold water comes in to the tank to be heated. That can be shut off if need be.

I also have a pipe coming out of the water heater where hot water leaves the tank to supply the house. That has a shut off too.

Built in to my water heater by code is a pressure relief drain. If for some reason the pressure in the tank were to exceed a certain amount, the valve will emergency release all the excess pressure in the tank. This has also happened in the past, and it floods the basement too.

That pressure relief valve was just replaced within the last year or two. It failed before, and I believe it is designed to fail in the open position, which it did when it last failed.

What happened this time was the base of the water heater rusted out. The whole bottom of the tank was draining water out like crazy all around the bottom rim (biggest leak was in the rear of the tank).

Nothing was coming out of the emergency pressure release tube. The tank simply failed.

My thermostat is a separate problem. It is stuck on a high setting, so that water is extremely hot. Lowering the temperature on the dial doesn't affect the water temperature out of the faucets. It has been like this for years simply because it wasn't worth the trouble to have fixed.

Where it has this code mandated safety relief valve, I am not worried about there being a pressure explosion or anything.

Also, right before the shutoff to the hot supply to the house is what I believe is another relief valve (a black circular thing sitting on the copper pipe).

The guy coming to install the new tank said he is going to bring something along to test the thermostat and water temperature manually and will figure out what the problem is. He'll probably just have to replace it.

If I can, I'll try and get some pictures up.
Thanks for the concern.

 

[Charles (in GA)]

Your safety valve is a TPS, Temperature/Pressure Safety. It has been relieving and needing replacement because the water was too hot. Had you fixed the thermostat, you would not have been buying new TPS valves all along.

If you do not have one, you also need to install an expansion tank for the water heater. This is required now. If I were you, I would wire the hot water out valve in the open position so it cannot be accidentally turned off (after you get the new heater installed) right now, you are lucky that you have that valve as it is keeping the water you diverted into the hot water side with the plugged faucet, from getting into the tank and the basement floor.

Charles

 

[larry_g]

You may or may not believe in Mythbusters but they did a couple of skits on the overpressured hot water heaters. I posted one link but there are many on the sidebar.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[strnjss]

Your safety valve is a TPS, Temperature/Pressure Safety. It has been relieving and needing replacement because the water was too hot. Had you fixed the thermostat, you would not have been buying new TPS valves all along.

If you do not have one, you also need to install an expansion tank for the water heater. This is required now. If I were you, I would wire the hot water out valve in the open position so it cannot be accidentally turned off (after you get the new heater installed) right now, you are lucky that you have that valve as it is keeping the water you diverted into the hot water side with the plugged faucet, from getting into the tank and the basement floor.

Charles

I only had to buy the TPS once. It has never released at all for all these years, except once when it failed. It was replaced a year or two ago and has been fine since.

The water has been hot, but I don't think it's hot beyond the capacity of the water heater. It's just basically stuck at what it was at before I tried to lower the temperature and won't budge from that.

That's good to know I need an expansion tank now, I'll check into that.

 

[nate379]

What would be so hard of running down to Lowes, grabbing a water heater (they have tons of them, trust me) throwing in place of the busted on, hook up... and holy freaking ****... hot water?!!

 

[spoolgarage]

What would be so hard of running down to Lowes, grabbing a water heater (they have tons of them, trust me) throwing in place of the busted on, hook up... and holy freaking ****... hot water?!!

I have to admit doing it the first time is scary but once its installed you laugh at the fact you were scared in the first place. If I remember correctly the home depot ones were reboxed rheem models and were a pretty good units.