Plumbing Forum?

vaporvac

Baffled...

We're basically baffled by it. The one odd thing, thinking about it, is that the toilet water got really hot before fixing the shower gaskets, but the shower and sink HW is just a trickle.

I jwould like to eliminate any easy solutions before decided it's clogged lines.

icesailor

What I think:

I think that when the checks in the shower valve were bad, it allowed hot water pressure to flow to the toilet because there is an obstruction in the hot and cold between somewhere and the sink. It filled the toilet with hot water because the obstruction is greater to the lav than to the toilet.

You say that you don't have any valves to the bathroom. How about under the sink? Do you have any there? Can you put any in? Like ones with 3/8 OD compression ends so you can use flex connectors?

Either way, you need to be able to flush the lines. I always take a wire coat hanger, straighten it out, and with the water to the lav off, take the guts of the faucet out and put the wire end of the coat hanger down the bore. You have to push it through the washer hole. If it is obstructed with rust chunks, you will feel them. They tend to gather there. You should end up by being able to push the hanger down a couple of feet down the pipe. If you do hit something, here's where you need the stop. You need to put a plastic glass over the faucet and turn it on. Water should flow rapidly out of the faucet. If it is slow, run the hanger up and down. If the flow increases, you will see chunks come through. Try both. If the sink is in a cabinet and valved, put long flex supplies on the stops and blow them into a 5 gallon bucket. See what you get. If you get this far, there are ways to connect an air compressor to the lav connections, connect them together, and blow air backwards. Which might blow the debris backwards.

If someone is cleaver, they can figure out ways to blow the lines backwards and get rid of the rust chunks. All the tricks we learned from opening old houses for the summer have gone by the way. We re-piped them all with copper sooner or later.



I had two jobs in the past few years where entire houses were plugged up with fine sand and no water would flow and one with rust from a new water service. Two plumbers had given up before I was called. One was from a caretaker who knew far more than I do but he called me in desperation. He couldn't believe the ways I had to get the rust out with air and not destroy the house that was being sold the next day. He never called me again. The other was a new house where water flooded under a deck where someone had put the water well and the fine silt of the loan filtered through the electrical pipe and into the well cap. The whole house filled with fine sand. It was a new house and two other plumbers had given up. The landscaper recommended me. I did the same thing. I got most of it one day, and finished the next. They never crabbed about the bill to me but they never called back. It was a rewarding challenge to me. The other ones gave up. If someone puts thought into it, they might be able to make it go. I'd try things first. But they might not see things the way I do. You just treat the air and water like water and make it go backwards.

Good luck.

vaporvac

Thank you! Will try...

I'll give this a try when I have some help next week and report back. Thank you!  I do have shut-offs under the sink and bath and toilet, just not to the shower or to the entire bathroom in the basement for the hot. I'm digesting these instructions and hopefully it will work...that would be much better that ripping up the ceiling below. How would you suggest I go about the shower or do you think fixing the lav will accomplish that?

 I think you're correct about the HW to the toilet. That was wild!

icesailor

Showers:

I thought the shower was working now. Take the shower head off and replace it with a 1/2" IPS cap. Open the lav water faucets one at a time. how is the pressure? Open the shower valve all the way. Does the lav pressure change? Does the water entering the valve correspond to the placing of the shower valve handle in the manner in which the water comes out of the shower? The shape of the cartridges determine which way they go in.

Its hard to explain because I have so many years of experience doing it from the hundreds and hundreds of houses I used to turn on year after year. Maybe thousands. But thousands of bathrooms.

Dealing with galvanized rust chunks in galvanized piping is a acquired skill that you must acquire. I've told people what I was going to do so they would understand. And they stood in awe of what I did, not believing it if they hadn't seen it.

If you have stops under the lav sinks, that is the best place to start. With the Coat Hanger. You have to think like water. You have to think in reverse. Air will go wherever water will go. You can make it go in reverse. Its just easier to clean up than water.



Good luck.

vaporvac

I apologize...

I'm sorry for how confusing this thread has become with all the different topics covered. The gaskets on the shower were fixed so it doesn't drip tand here isn't any crossover anymore. Mine doesn't have cartridges as it's before they had them...100yrs old. Here are two pdfs for it that Speakman sent me. They were made for a really long time.

http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/posts/18503/S-2230-MIXOMETER.pdf

http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/posts/18504/S-2230%20Mixometer%20Operation.pdf

I'll try the sink first because cleaning it might help out the shower and it's easier since there are independent shut-off valves. thank you for taking the time to help.

Bob Gagnon plumbing and heating

Couldn't You

Shut off the water main, open a faucet down stairs on the water heater and try and blast out those galvanized mains by attaching a hose to your upstairs faucet? I've heard of guys doing this.



Thanks, Bob Gagnon

icesailor

You can get hosed:

You can do that or any shape or form of it.

When trying to get fine sand or fine rust and sediment out of piping systems, I have found that using water works. But if it doesn't, its because the water makes the sand/rust more difficult to move and that air pressure will start moving it. Because small amounts of air start passing through the sand and makes room for more air to follow. Like a lot of good ideas we develop, necessity is the mother of invention. When one thing doesn't work, we try something else. Until something works. That worked for me on many occasions. My air compressor became the most important power tool in my truck. There is no limit to what uses you can find for a well appointed air compressors. Today, I was grouting the brick tiles I made by cutting up some 12" X 12" tiles on my patio. I needed to get the debris out from between the joints from the bricks. Out came the compressor and a 50' hose with a air blow nozzle.

Grout spaces clear of leaves and loose mortar. Job completed. Quick connectors are a wonderful thing.

vaporvac

did not work...

I'm sure it's totally user error and lack of experience, but blowing down the lines with the air compressor didn't work. It did dislodge some rust,but the hot on the sink and shower is still a trickle.Should I still try with a hanger as I only used the compressor?

I'm checking behind an access panel to see if there are any shut-off valves that I didn't know about, but am not holdin gout much hope. I'll report back on any change, but for now it's a fail.



I hope I didn't miss something in the instructions. thanks for taking the time to try to help. I'm still open to questions and advice.

icesailor

Rust pressures:

You need constant air pressure on the piping. That means that you have to come up with a way to connect your air compressor to the piping. You have to make the air/water run backwards. It also needs a place to go. That's why you need to be able to connect the hot and cold together in a way that you can blow into the hot and either make it come out a hot water drain, or come out the opposite faucet. You must make the water or air run backwards. I have a 50' air hose for my air compressor with quick disconnect adapters on the compressor. I have another device (one of many) made of 1/2" pipe nipples, fittings and a valve and hose drain that has a quick disconnect fitting on it. I can connect it to my air hose and adapt the other end to anything I can think of that I want to blow air through. I can connect it and leave it.

Think of it as your body with atherosclerosis. There's a clot somewhere. You need to find it and get it out. You need both ends to be open so that when you blow on one end, the air/water has a place to go. I suggested the sink because you can usually remove supplies and replace them with braided flex supplies. Then get other supplies that you can connect the air to. Or cross connect to. You have to think like water. I can look at a problem like yours and instantly see ways that might accomplish my goals. I go into stores looking for "something". Someone asks me if they can help me find what I am looking for. "No, I don't know what I am looking for, but I'll know it when I see it". Some times I have to go to more than one place. After years, I had quite the collection of things to do anything I needed to do. Including once, a rig to test the piston ring leakage on my lawn tractor. It wasn't the piston rings, it was the broken flywheel key that I had replaced that broke again immediately because cranking the engine with a broken flywheel key will polish the end of the crank and flywheel and eliminate the resistance of the friction fit. So, I used valve lapping compound to rough up the end of the crank and flywheel and I never broke another key again.

You have to think globally but act locally.

Sometimes, you have to find the spot and beat the crap out of it with a hammer for the shock effect.

vaporvac

Trying again...experiments

So I tried some trouble-shooting experiments to see if any of this makes sense to anyone.

Background: 100yr old Speakman that had a valve cross-over leak. We fixed that aspect, but the other problem of trickling hot water at the sink and tepid water at the shower persists. This is a second fl BR; the tub and toilet are fine. All the water to other plumbing in the house is HOT and pressure is great except to hot water tap at sink.



For these experiments I shut off the Cold water supply in the basement that ONLY feeds this bathroom.

1st experiment: Turned On hot taps to shower and sink

Turned Off Cold supply in basement.

Result: no change.trickle at sink, tepid at shower.



2nd experiment: Turned on Cold at sink (great pressure) and left running for a couple of minutes

Turned of Cold supply in basement.

Result: water at tap did not turn off, but turned HOT!!!, and pressure stayed strong. No effect on dribble of water at hot tap.



3rd experimen with cold supply remaining shut Offt: shut off cold tap to sink (which was running HOT water), turned ON cold to shower. NO cold water at shower so turned tap off. Then I turned on the Cold at the sink, but this time instead of Hot water there was no flow. Hot tap NOT affected.



The only difference was I turned on the sink tap AFTER turning off the Cold supply and trying to turn on the cold at the shower.



4th experiment: Turned on Cold supply valve and then cold tap at sink.

Result .full flow of cold water at sink. No effect on Hot tap.

I then turned shower mixer to hot, but sink remained cold.



Why can't I get HOT water at the shower and full pressure at the sink. I tried cleaning the lines as icesailor suggested, but no luck. Do these experiments help anyone trouble shoot this? And why was I getting HOT water out of the COLD sink tap? I'm determined to fix this.

icesailor

Hot & Cold:

Its hard to follow what you did in the order which you did it.

I suggest that you do a single line drawing of all the fixtures with the hot lines in red and the cold lines in blue. With a green line as the outlet. You have to think of it like an electrical schematic except that electricity doesn't care where it goes (unless you use diodes) and of you turn off one side of a water supply system, the other side will go where it wants to go. The only place that you have a direct cross connection between the hot and cold is at the shower valve.

I once had something similar to what you describe, In a past renovation, years before, someone put a Watts #70A tempering valve under a floor to control water temperature to a hand shower on a tub. Through subsequent renovations, this fact was lost. The owner never complained about cold showers, but people paying $20,000 for a month Summer rental did, But you I couldn't make it happen when a tenant was there and the owner never complained. The house was sold. The new owner complained. After a lot of screwing around, I found the valve, covered over years before with no access anywhere. Because the house was built in the 1920's and had some parts piped overhead, I had to figure out how it was piped before I could pinpoint what the problem was.

Are you sure that there is no place where someone might have put a tempering valve that became buried in the walls that only controls the hot water for the tub/shower and the sink?



Can you shut off the water to the whole house, drain it back and take out the guts of the stop valve for the hot water in the cellar? Look and see if the bibb screw head has come off and/or the faucet washer is off and jammed into the seat of the valve. If it is a brass screw and the head is off, it could be jammed into some galvanized pipe.

At one time, it worked. The problem is finding out what happened so that now it doesn't.

RobG

Has it

Has it ever worked since you have been there? If yes, what has changed?

vaporvac

I know it's confusing...

Thanks icesailor and robg. Yes, it always worked until the last couple of years. It's seems random as nothing was changed recently except putting a low-flow shower head on which I removed  for all experiments...it didn't seem to have any effect.

  The tub and shower are original fixtures  @ 100yrs old. The shower has no access panel and I can't see anything unusual in the bath access panel. It's basically just the drain pipe and water lines with shut-offs. The toilet is ten years old and the sink taps were put in maybe7-8 years ago on an old sink. It's a modern washerless faucet.No chance of any tempering valve as I've lived here many years and this is a recent problem.



I thought I'd fixed the cross-over problem when putting in the new shower gaskets...does the hot water in the sink tap mean that's not the case?



I can draw a little schematic showing where the fixtures are relative to one another, but I can't really see the piping. I presume it comes to the tub first and then to the sink and shower as the tub pressure and temp is fine. I'll do that when I get home.

 I'll try your suggestion at the HWtank on Monday when I have help.



The experiments basically just involved shutting off the cold water to that bathroom in differnt orders and seeing what affect in had on the hot.  The only time it did anything unusual was when I had the sink tap on prior to shutting off the main supply. It's just too strange that cutting off the cold supply while running cold water at the sink would force hot water into the tap.. BTW, I had the shower off but turned to cold and when I shut off the cold supply it DID shut off any cold flow to the shower and tub. When I turned it to Hot, water came out.

I love a good mystery, but this one is beyond me.

RobG

Shame

It's a shame that you don't have an access panel and individual shut offs for the shower. The only thing that comes to mind is that the cold water (which has higher pressure than the hot) is cross connecting in the shower valve. I recall that you repaired it recently but was it a correct fix? Old valves and new parts do not necessarily work well together. If it worked before, it has to be in the shower valve.



Rob

vaporvac

Tell me about it...

It's the only plumbing fixture without individual shut-off valves in the entire house and only one of two on an outside wall, which explains no access panel also.



soi here's a cruddy little schematic showing the br set-up Right +North. I think the water lines come in from the East to the tub and then from there over to the sink/shower/toilet, but i can't really see behind the panel very well due to insulation/joists, etc.



When we recently repaired the drip, we just put in new gaskets. That fixed the toilet hot water issue. Everything about the actual mixer tap seemed in really good shape and the plumber cleaned it all beautifully before reinstalling it. The gaskets were specifically for this Speakman mix-o-meter.



When i have help on Monday, I'm going to try to turn off the HW valve for the front side of my house and see if any lines from there go to the problem bthroom. I've never been able to find a master shut-off for the back side of the house.

icesailor

Speakman Mixers:

Those old Speakman Mixers like the Kohler ones have a quirk. At least the Kohler ones do.



Did this start when the plumber changed or repaired the shower valve parts?

Does the valve open and cold water comes in and on when you first turn on the water? If you look at the parts that hold the washers, they appear to be the same until you compare them side by side. Then, you will see that they are exact opposites. If you are unaware of this difference, it is very easy to flip them over and have the hot spool on the cold side. If you take them out (carefully), you will notice that the scooped out part on one starts on the bottom by the washer and the other one is on farther up and open at the top. That is so as you turn on the water, one side (cold) starts first and as you move the yoke farther away from the seats, it exposed more of the other side. But that shouldn't be the cause of all your problems. I see things like yours when faucet washers come off because screw heads on bibb screws fail from de-zincification. The screw gets lodged somewhere and or the washer gets ground into the seat, partially blocking the hole for the water to come through.



There is a way to add stops to the sink. Some may not see it but others among us can see how it is done. The soaring thinkers among us who can't walk away from a situation and find out that someone fixed it. Because the hot supply only feeds the tub and sink, it has to be in there. You need to install a stop valve on the sink so you can make air or water go in reverse and blow whatever is in there, out. I can see and hear subtle things that mean absolutely nothing to you and others that mean a lot to me. That's the difference between one and another. Experience.

vaporvac

Sink shut-offs

Thanks icesailor,  I love reading your musings.  I wanted to clarify there ARE shut-off valves to the sink ,bath and toilet, just NOT to the separate shower as it backs onto an exterior wall.There also, is NO shut off valve to just shut off this half of the house in the basement (that we/ve ever found). Should I take it off and try the air compressor method there? We did it through the faucet before.



Regarding the mixer  valve. I'll try turning it to cold and see if I get hot. If I'm reading your reply correctly that's what should happen, although I don't think it's the case here. In the prior experiments, when I shut off the cold in the basement, I didn't get any water flow out of the shower when it was turned to cold. That tells me cold  is hooked up to the cold valve. You do have a great understanding of these valves...they work exactly like you say!



I'll try the air compressor tomorrow. If that's the issue, it should help the flow of water to the shower as well, correct?

RobG

Toilet

I haven't read the entire thread (you should start a new one). If this home has galvanized piping and you were getting hot water through the toilet, you have a cross connection. I will take a wild guess and say that it is at the shower valve as that is the only pressure balanced unit in the bath. Can you install shut-offs? That would make troubleshooting a breeze.



Rob

icesailor

Old Shower Valves:

Rob,

As I remember in this long thread, the valve was made sometime after the end of the Pleistocene era and before the descendants of the Chukchi Siberian reindeer herders crossed the Alaskan land bridge, where they settled in Canyon De Chelly and became Navajos. That was before pressure balance valve. I guess that is why in the beginning, I thought of anti-sweat valves. They are a direct cross connection between hot and cold. You can also get hot water cross connections where you have hand sprays and hoses with positive shut off valves. If the hot and cold are open but the hose shut-off valves is off, you have an open cross connection.

If you have plaqued up galvanized and the hot is obstructed on the riser to the bathroom and the cold is free, the cold will have a higher flow pressure and overcome the hot, making the hot water slow but cool because although water is flowing out of the faucet, the restriction is the overflow. There's all kinds of tricks like sticking my finger over a flowing faucet to see if the flow increases at another faucet. Its hard to remember all the things I have done. Its like one of those "moments". If you have supply stops on the sinks, you can always adapt an air hose to them and with the water off, see if you have equal pressure.

vaporvac

Hilarious, but SO true!

That is hilarious, but so true. I have a hard time wrapping my head around

disposable plumbing fixtures, I guess.  Generally, I've found the

original to be superior or at least fixable. Even my Chambers stove is

getting up there in years. In fact, the  single modern state-of-the-art

system in my house is that for heating:   twinned Slantfin Intrepid

TR50s, stage-fired, but they're attacehed to the awesome 100yr old Trane

vapovacuum steam system.and use the original Vstat.



I'm startinga new post with my latest findings. Please follow. I'm pretty good at

trouble-shooting with guidance, but need guidance!!! Plus, then I'll

need to figure out how to fix the problem.

http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/151279/Cross-connection-in-blue-bathroom