On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:39:50 -0700, Rick Blaine wrote:

"Donna Ohl, Grady Volunteer Coordinator" wrote:

I was wondering why BOTH the hot water outlet and the cold-water inlet had
check valves built into the respective dialectric nipples provided in the
top of the new tank!

If you are talking about the galvanized nipples with blue plastic flaps that go
between the heater at the cold/hot ports, those are thermal breaks - not check
valves. They reduce the heat loss from the tank into the pipes when the water is
not being used.

A check valve is significantly larger than a nipple and would typically only be
be found after the main valve and before the heater.

Hi Rick,
Oh. That changes things. I'll check with the literature. We thought the hot
had a heat check valve inside the nipple. It had a black rubber center
which the cold nipple didn't have.

Due to the fact there was little room, and we thought the heat-loss valve
was already there, we didn't put in a flap valve and we used a straight
stainless steel flexible pipe.

If what you say is correct, then we may need to replace the stainless steel
flexible pipe with an S-shaped copper flex tube plus a dialectric union.

One question that still confuses me is the BRASS on the ends of some of the
stainless steel and copper pipes. Can we pub BRASS to galvanized or must we
alwyas use a dialectric union. (I ask because the stainless steel pipe had
brass on the end yet it was advertised for iron to iron).

Donna