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Default Greenish debris coming from hot tap

On 1 Mar, 18:13, Harry Bloomfield
wrote:
After serious thinking NT wrote :



On Mar 1, 5:41*pm, None wrote:
On 1 Mar, 17:33, JimK wrote:


On Mar 1, 5:07 pm, None wrote:
On 1 Mar, 17:01, Chris J Dixon wrote:
None wrote:
We've had issues for ages now with our water supply. The mains supply
itself contains sediment, but the hot supply is giving us problems we
are baffled by.


The worst problem is when more than one hot tap is opened and demand
is higher around the house. What happens is that fairly large
particles, which I can only describe as being similar in appearance to
snots (no joke!) flow out with the water. I've been wondering for a
good while as to what the hell this stuff can be. You don't really see
it with just one tap opened, or demand being lower, but its an
unpleasant thing to have in your supply right?
I've talked to plumbers, they don't want to know really (because I
presume they have no clue how such crap could form in the hot water
cylinder). Live in Dublin btw, and never seen this in any house but
mine. Would appreciate input, cheers.
Do you have a header tank? If so, have a look in it.
Chris
--
Chris J Dixon *Nottingham UK


Have dancing shoes, will ceilidh.
There is some sediment on the bottom of the tank, I clean and
disinfect it every year. This problem with the hot tap has always been
there though..


Is it a private supply?
we had something similar a few years ago, lots of sediment in the
header tank - since removed for new system - I suspect the snots were
hot water dwelling "fungi" or equivalent lurking in the hot water
cylinder.


JimK


We're on a mains water supply, not a private system. It does seem to
be some sort of bacterial growth in the hot cylinder, if it were
isolated to a pipe length, it would be flushed out eventually. It
comes from any hot tap when demand is high in the house,


*I just wish I could find out how to get it sorted. We've had our
current hot water cylinder for almost four years, and I know it
occurred in the previous one too (that cylinder ended up leaking, I
wonder if this stuff is corrosive too).


bacterial & fungal are easy to sort, put a bottle of bleach in the
header tank, leave it there for a bit, then draw enough water for it
to enter the cylinder. Flush out through all the taps later. At least
you'd eliminate one major possibility that way.


Could this 'growth' possibly be due to your cylinder temperature being
set too low? Check the temperature of the hot water as it comes out of
the hot tap - good excuse to buy one of those IR meters BTW.

The 'snot', sounds very much like the stuff which forms in car
windscreen washers and blocks them. I would be inclined to (besides
checking the temperature), turn the supply off to the header tank and
drain the entire HW system down, flushing through each tap in turn
until completely empty, let it refill and repeat. Finally, set the
cylinder stat up to maximum, to kill everything in there and flush
again. Finally set the stat back to normal.

--
Regards,
* * * * Harry (M1BYT) (L)http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk


Thanks for the input guys, really helpful. I actually just finished
performing another cleansing of the system, using some Milton
sterilising solution. Possibly won't be enough to kill very much in
the cylinder though... I don't fancy using bleach, could cause issues
if someone accidentally uses water too soon afterward.

The cylinder I have doesn't seem to have a stat unfortunately...
though the water can get hot enough to really burn your hands, so I
would think that wouldn't be too much of an issue.