Temperature/Pressue Relief Valve Discharge Piping
We have a leased commercial office building at work. Last year the Watts valve weeped over an extended period, and damaged a bunch of files stored in cardboard boxes on the floor of the adjacent room. The water heater is located in an interior janitors closet with no direct access to the exterior, and the building is a slab on grade.
The Landlord had a plumber come “fix” the problem by installing a new Watts valve, and routing the discharge line through four nineties to a sink, about five feet away.
We did a mock OSHA inspection, and wrote it up because the line can’t discharge to a sink. We know they will write us for this, because they hit us with two violations for improper routing of the vent line the last time they inspected us.
If we were on an exterior wall, the solution would be easy. But since we aren’t: Does anyone have any ideas on how to comply with the code short of jack hammering the slab to install a receptor basin?
Replies
One way would be to do an indirect drain: have the relief discharge pipe terminate above a hub drain, something like a 4 x 1-1/2 reducer that acts as a sort of funnel, with the 1-1/2 pipe draining to some approved place.
The idea is to have the relief discharge pipe terminate in the same space where the WH is located, so that any discharge is visible, yet able to be drained.
The "approved place" could be under the sink, where the plumber could add a second trap arm and p-trap below the existing sink drain. The new p-trap would also have a hub drain to receive the 1-1/2 drain line as an indirect waste.
Another way would be to install a WH pan under the WH, and run its 1" drain down thru a hole hammer-drilled thru the slab, and terminate the relief discharge drain about 6" above the new pan so any discharge would be visible as a drip, or as water puddling in the pan. This, of course, would only handle a small leak because you'd be depending on the soil's ability to soak up the leak, but relief valves rarely, if ever, discharge more than a dribble.
The most important thing about a drip from a relief valve is that somebody sees it and replaces it or whatever is wrong with the WH before the WH explodes due to t'stat malfunction combined with a relief valve that gets corroded shut by constant small leakage.
Either of these solutions may get a no-no from your inspector, depending on how flexible he is with the pracitcal problems of existing installations.
Thanks
That is sort of what I was thinking of doing, but we have to agree with the landlord as to what the solution is, and then he hires a plumber and back charges us.