More on the water heater

Last night around twenty past eleven I was in the vicinity of the water heater.  OK, I was in the can getting ready for bed…  And I could hear this dripping that sounded like it might be coming from the water heater.  I thought to my self “That must be drained out by now!  I wonder if it’s just rain dripping from the roof.”  It had been extremely windy just a little while before and it came along with a nasty sounding driving rain.  But it seemed to have stopped.  So I threw some clothes back on, grabbed the cordless drill (it has a couple of screw driver bits that live in a compartment on top of the motor housing) and went out side to check.  You see, the water heater is in a closet accessed from the outside of my home and the original door was long gone by the time I bought the place and was replaced by a sheet of plywood that’s screwed to the door frame..

All of the connections Ted made are holding just fine without a drip in sight.  But the pipe we cut off that feeds the water heater was still dripping at an alarming rate.  Something must be back-feeding the tank.  I thought I’d checked everything inside and made sure they were all off.  Time to button up the hatch and go check again.

Ah ha!  The valve in the tub. While turned off was still set to mix for the temperature I prefer for my shower!  That must be the path for the water to flow backward down the out-flow from the water heater and out the cut off in-flow pipe!  I cranked the knob over to full cold (I really hope I remember to check that after the new water heater is installed!) and after a few minutes the dripping has stopped.

Thank goodness!  If that hadn’t worked I don’t know what else I could have checked…

One other little tidbit, while I was checking for leaks I noticed that my idea to cut off the pipe after the valve would not have worked.  Whoever installed the water heater that’s there now used the shortest possible nipple between the tank and valve that they could.  There is simply no room there to even cut it off, much less to install a cap.  So to borrow a line from Weekend Update: “Oh, um, never mind…”