Hot Water Plumbing Problems

sarahharris · July 2009

So we have an old home (1902) that is 3 stories.
We currently have a tenant in our ground floor apartment. She just informed me that she is unable to get the hot water to come out of the bathroom sink tap.
She could let it run and run and it will not get hot at the sink tap.
Her kitchen sink tap works fine.
Our kitchen sink tap works fine.
Our 3rd floor bathroom sink gets hot pretty quickly but
our 2nd floor bathroom sink tap has the same problem that out tenant does...
Our 2nd floor bathroom sink hot water has NEVER gotten hot (unless I take a shower in there beforehand) and we've just learned to live with it, since our primary bathroom is on the 3rd floor...
Anyway, this is a new problem ( we think) for our ground floor bathroom sink as our previous two tenants never mentioned it.

We have a tank (blech) water heater 80 gal on the ground level of the house, so her bathroom is actually the closest to the source of hot water.

We can't figure this out.

meredithb · July 2009

hmmmmm.

Thanks for sharing.

whynot_31 · July 2009

is there a mixing valve? ...a valve that protects people from getting burns from surges in hot water by mixing cold water in.

If so, the valve may be clogged with gunk (a technical term) or stuck open to allow only cold water.

MOD · July 2009

I would post this on Brownstoner, they have a forum section. Mostly building owners there and lots of questions and answers like this.

cool the kid · July 2009

Do you know if the hot water system in the building has a return + recirculating pump?

wirenut · July 2009

I don't mean to insult or offend anyone, but

Is this a new tenant?

Some sinks are occassionally mis-connected where the HOT is incorrectly on the RIGHT and the COLD is incorrectly on the LEFT

This goes back to the 3 basic rules of Plumbing:

1-shit flows downhill
2-HOT on the left - COLD on the right
3-don't bite your fingernails

Hot Water Plumbing Problems

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