I have a neighbor who had a leak behind the water heater in the wall. I come into the picture after the family is tired of taking cold showers because the water heater has been pulled out to get at the leak “Can I hook up the water heater for them please”? I tell them I’ll fix the pipe and than put in the water heater. I’m not a plumber but I have sweated enough copper pipe. So the hot water pipe out of the water heater has water coming into it from somewhere but where? It is not hooked up to the heater. I have 3/4 copper is coming out of the heater into the wall and down in to the slab. Just before the slab is a tee into 1/2 street elbows than 1/2 copper tubing that also ends up in the slab. I got it all hooked up and it works but where was the water coming from. Not enough to wash up with but enough to make a mess and also to make it really hard to sweat the pipe with out the steam making a pin whole in the fittings. I do not think they have anything that recirculates. It just makes no sense to me that even hooking up a shop vac did not stop the water. Any thoughts as to what would cause this.
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can't tell from your description, and I can't see it from here - but - get a piece of white bread and stuff the pipe before you sweat - that'll keep the water out of the area long enough to get your soldering done - bread will dissolve/wash right out -
Did you shut off the cold water?
Some single lever faucet has a internal leak.
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Did you cut the cold water supply off? Some faucets will allow water to go through the faucet from the cold water inlet to the hot water inlet. Almost all of them will if the faucet is open.
In addition, water will stay trapped in the lines if you do not open the faucets. Turn off the main shutoff valve and open the hot and cold water valves of every faucet in the house. Also open the lowest faucet (this is frequently an outside sillcock. Wait on the entire system to drain, and you probably won't have any more problems.
What Bill said. Single handle faucets will back feed the hot side if its not pressurized.
is this a fairly new house?
Could be the shower valve letting cold water enter the hot side.
Anti-scald valves seem to do weird things. I can't figure them out.
Thanks to all of you for the ideas. The water was disconected from the source and because off the steam I hooked up a shop vac to see if I could get the rest of the water out, I used it from the source and the problem end.
I think the faucet idea may be the problem with water after everything was hooked back up but not when it was all disconected. Go figure. !7 year old house in a track development, everything pretty low end but the kitchen and powder room downstairs they just had done.
why would he take a leak behind the water heater? :)
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