Derwood

We have a pretty new (less than 2 years old) hot water heater. Every time someone takes a shower, washes dishes, etc., the tank refills (obviously) but the overflow pipe always ends up dripping. We put a container under the pipe and I would say we are dripping about a pint of water a day. Is this normal? Is there an adjustment that can be made to make it stop refilling before it overflows?

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newtx

Try snugging up the shutoff valve on the overflow. If that doesn't stop the leak you may have to have a new washer. Be sure your overflow pipe is plumbed to the outside. I had an overflow valve blow on my water heater and it blows out steam and near boiling water. Very dangerous. Buy some pvc pipe and send it outdoors. If not corrected the dripping will get worse. (and it could be the popoff valve itself leaking)

cj2112

DO NOT try "snugging up the shutoff valve on the overflow" this is a temperature/pressure relief valve specifically designed to release if the pressure gets to high, not an "overflow valve". Try turning you're hot water heater down to between 120 to 140 degrees farenheit.

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"If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying--that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976--establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime." Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Committee Print I-IX, 1-23 (1982).

steveincolumbus

check water pressure in house, the valves are made to releave pressure at 150 lbs. If pressure when leaking is normal its the valve, if high, likely to be a one-way-valve or regulator in line preventing backflow, and then you would need a pressure tank of sorts to have a place to expand to.... sence water expands when heated

http://www.factsfacts.com/MyHomeRepa...sureRelief.htm

Derwood

Thanks, that's exactly what the pipe looks like. I'm not sure if i'm qualified to fix it myself, but at least I know what to tell a plumber.

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newtx

My bad. cj2112 is correct. I don't know what I was thinking. But do plumb the overflow outside for safety.

Derwood

so it magically stopped overflowing. Or did it....

It may be a coincidence, but I recently fixed a toilet that shares it's plumbing with the washing machine and hot water heater (common wall). The toilet's water was turned off in the bathroom for several months while I put off fixing it. Seems that the water heater has stopped overflowing since I turned that shutoff back on. Could that be the case?

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Charlatan

You might want to have it looked at. When mine started doing this it was because the dip tube inside the tank was broken.

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