Brain trust help needed... Water Heater OP/OT valve

[fingpilot]

Gas water heater, 6-ish years old. Started dripping out the OT/OP valve. Put bucket under same and flushed it well. Drip did not stop.

Replaced valve. Still dripping. 80psi and 600F rated. Defective replacement? Water temp turned down to lukewarm for testing. Am getting bad looks after morning showers.....

[John Rogers]

Is the drip coming out of the outlet hole in the valve or coming down the outside and dripping off the bottom? I would suggest putting a 2 or 3 inch nipple in the outlet to see where the drip actually comes from. I had that happen and there was a crack near the top and the water leaked behind the insulation and came out the relief valve, looked like it was bad, it was the water heater so I put in a tankless model.

[sammyg2]

Just replace it with a pipe plug.
What could go wrong?

LEGAL DISCLAIMER:
iffn anyone out there is dumb enuff to do that, darwin is on his way




Serial, if the new one leaks it's either defective or maybe it got twisted, warped, er bent during install.
Did you try to pop it and let it re-seat? Sometimes that works.

Good teflon pipe dope can almost seal one of these when hand-tight. You don't have to crank down that hard.


HTH

[fingpilot]

John;

I did consider that, but the drip is definately coming from the pipe (valve). I did cycle the valve.

I think I'm going to try returning the valve as defective. Measured the water pressure at 45psi. Have turned the temp down to lowest setting, and is certainly below 600F.

I'll let ya know.....

[fingpilot]

Defective valve. Replacement is dry. Temp back up to shower fogging the windows.

[rick-l]

Does the water service have a pressure regulator and the house have an expansion tank? The bladder may be leaking. Can you put a pressure guage on a hose outlet?

[rick-l]

Story about stupid stuff I've done:

I 'd watch football and the toilet would run on the other side of the wall from the couch where I was laying. It pissed me off so I started to investigate. I replaced the rubber flush valve. No improvement so I replaced the fill valve with a Fluidmaster. I remember taking it out thinking this must be as old as the house. It was all metal (brass) and said Watts on it. Later I patted myself on the back for fixing the running toilet.

About 6 months later I was in the same situation as you when I noticed the relief valve dribbling occasionally. I could not figure it out. Replaced the valve, no improvement. After discussing it at work for hours, I was convinced to put a pressure guage on the spout for the washer. After the water heater ran for about 20 minutes the pressure wold climb to the limit.

Apparently the toilet fill valve was also a relief valve. Code now requires a relief tank which I installed and it fixed the problem, but not before enough water got into the bottom pan of the water heater to rust it out (the relief pipe didn't go to the floor).

[porsche4life]

6 year old water heater? Not sure I'd have gone to that effort. Around here that thing would be rusting the tank out very very soon.

[flyenby]

Are you talking about an expansion tank? As water heats it also expands, if you have high water pressure ..it will trigger the valve..

[fastfredracing]

[QUOTE=sammyg2;9087879]Just replace it with a pipe plug.
What could go wrong?

LEGAL DISCLAIMER:
iffn anyone out there is dumb enuff to do that, darwin is on his way

[fingpilot]

Originally Posted by rick-l

Does the water service have a pressure regulator and the house have an expansion tank? The bladder may be leaking. Can you put a pressure guage on a hose outlet?

I did put a guage on a hose outlet. 63psi, all the time. There is a press regulator in the basement at the water inlet. Guage on it says 58psi. There is a small ( I'd guess 1 gal. ) expansion tank on the cold inlet to the heater tank.

So far, so good.