relief valve

Larry Weingarten

... to go buy a pressure gauge that reads zero to 160 or 200 psi; and has female hose threads on it. Hook this up to your heater's drain valve and fire up the heater. For starters, pressure should be no higher than 80 and best between 50 and 60 psi. If you see pressure climb on firing, (should only take a few minutes) you need an expansion tank. If you get scalding hot water from the taps, your heater is WAY too hot. Pressure and temperature are the two things that make water heater relief valves open.

Yours, Larry

don_185

relief valves

relief valves that do what they are suppose to do.

When you come to a relief valve that releases every now and again on a open system that is used for hotwater and house heating what could be the problem?

Could it be to much pressure into the building? What about
because there is no longer a place for the expansion to go?
What about a mild day and a high temp setting on water control would that cause it as well?

And what if the relief valve was piped to the outdoors would we ever find the problem to begin with?

Welcome to my world of a cheap means of a heat plant.

trevor pierce, London Boiler Service

Before I opened my own company I worked for another that did some of these systems, water heaters doing space heating , is there an expansion tank rated for potable water on there? there should be! Imagine if someone has multiple teenage daughters and on Friday they drain the tank of hot water and leave, the tank will take the cold water at whatever temperature and heat it to set point temp! If there is any form of backflow prevension on the water meter etc and nobody opens the tap, bam away she goes out the relief, I would often ask people to run there hot water taps a few times even on a standard tank install just to be on the safe side! And I think some of the new tanks have check valves in them! There is many very smart people on this forum, and I think many of them deal with this stuff much more than I, you will get answers!