On Feb 1, 9:51 am, "Paul of Dayton"
wrote:
Hi Folks -

This one has me stumped. When we bought this house 5 years ago, we quickly
discovered it was easy to run out of hot water. I did the usual checks to
see if the WH was connected correctly and also checked each plumbing fixture
to see if a bad valve might be allowing the cold and hot to mix. I finally
chalked it up to on old 40gal gas heater full of gunk and turned the temp
up.

The heater finally died this summer so I replaced it with a 50gal unit with
a larger burner. I set it at the recommended setting and figured all would
be well. Lately, I find we are running out of hot water again. This
morning, one shower emptied it. It is burning correctly, just full of cold
water.

I bumped the temp up a bit but I really liked not burning my hands to a
cinder with hot water. There has to be something causing this but I am
stumped.

By the way, the old heater wasn't significantly heaver than the new one
after I emptied it.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

PoD

--

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

-Hanlon's razor


Very weird, unless of course, you are taking real long showers. With
2 water heaters, and one of them brand new, it would seem your idea of
the hot water somehow being cross connected with the cold is possible,
though it would seem unlikely.

I'd perform the following quick and easy test. Let the system sit
overnight. Then before any water is used, try opening just the cold
faucets one at a time, and let it flow for a min. Go check the hot
water pipe coming out of the WH a few feet from the unit. If it's
hot, you'll know that somehow the hot and cold are interconnected.

I'd also measure the temp of the water coming out of the hot faucet.
I think I have mine at about 130, which isn't real hot and I don't run
out here with a 40 gal unit.