IaHawk
New Member
- Messages
- 27
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
Hi all. I've been having some issues with my water heater and I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice. We are having our basement finished, and I had some issues with the original plumbers (see separate post). In any event, I'm on company #2 and so far so good. They will not be coming in to finish for another couple of weeks. Here's the deal...
We've got a 50 gallon Ruud gas water heater (see pic of similar type of unit). After the initial installers left, I noticed that our water heater didn't seem to be producing as much hot water. In other words, it seems we run out pretty quickly. We've got a 3 bedroom, two bath home, and none of the runs are particularly long. Even if one or two are, we never had these issues before. I initially thought maybe these guys accidentally bumped the dial, so I kicked it up a bit. I have since kicked it up more and more until it's almost to the max. No changes.
A good example of the problem we're having is this morning I took a shower (outside temp is warmer than before we had these problems). The water is initially really hot, but I continually have to nudge the lever to the left to keep it hot. I take about 5 minute showers and by the time I was done, I had the handle all the way to the left and could tell the hot was running low--normally all the way to the left would be too hot to handle.
I've checked the hot at other locations thinking maybe these guys crossed a line or something. No issues there, all locations suffer from the same problem. When the second plumber was bidding the job I asked him to take a peak at the heater and connections and he didn't notice any issues (this was very early into the problem though, so I don't fault him for not taking a closer look at that point).
The only thing that I can see that the first set of plumbers did to the water heater was that there was a hose attached to the bottom outlet valve. I assume they drained some of the water when they were doing their install?
So to summarize:
I've got a water heater that seems to be running out of hot water. Prior to these guys coming into the house, I had no issues.
The temp dial is set hotter than it was before, but the problem still remains.
The gas is working and the water heater does kick on once there is some demand from the unit.
No lines are crossed--problem is at all locations in the house.
This water heater is just over two years old and we do run a softner in the house (our water is very hard without the softener).
When the water has not been run for a long time and I place my hand on the copper output, the pipe is fairly warm, but so is the cold input. When I turn the hot on, the cold pipe get cold real quick, which seems like that's the way it should be.
Any advice? The only thing that I can point to that the first set of plumbers did was to attach the hose and they must have drained some of the water. On Ruud's website, the instructions say that if you are going to drain your heater, you should shut the gas off. I don't know how much they drained or if they shut the gas off. Could this draining (if it occured) with the gas not shut off be causing my issues? Please help.
I have no qualms about calling a plumber in to fix this, but if there are some things I can do to trouble shoot, I'd like to try. Thanks.
We've got a 50 gallon Ruud gas water heater (see pic of similar type of unit). After the initial installers left, I noticed that our water heater didn't seem to be producing as much hot water. In other words, it seems we run out pretty quickly. We've got a 3 bedroom, two bath home, and none of the runs are particularly long. Even if one or two are, we never had these issues before. I initially thought maybe these guys accidentally bumped the dial, so I kicked it up a bit. I have since kicked it up more and more until it's almost to the max. No changes.
A good example of the problem we're having is this morning I took a shower (outside temp is warmer than before we had these problems). The water is initially really hot, but I continually have to nudge the lever to the left to keep it hot. I take about 5 minute showers and by the time I was done, I had the handle all the way to the left and could tell the hot was running low--normally all the way to the left would be too hot to handle.
I've checked the hot at other locations thinking maybe these guys crossed a line or something. No issues there, all locations suffer from the same problem. When the second plumber was bidding the job I asked him to take a peak at the heater and connections and he didn't notice any issues (this was very early into the problem though, so I don't fault him for not taking a closer look at that point).
The only thing that I can see that the first set of plumbers did to the water heater was that there was a hose attached to the bottom outlet valve. I assume they drained some of the water when they were doing their install?
So to summarize:
I've got a water heater that seems to be running out of hot water. Prior to these guys coming into the house, I had no issues.
The temp dial is set hotter than it was before, but the problem still remains.
The gas is working and the water heater does kick on once there is some demand from the unit.
No lines are crossed--problem is at all locations in the house.
This water heater is just over two years old and we do run a softner in the house (our water is very hard without the softener).
When the water has not been run for a long time and I place my hand on the copper output, the pipe is fairly warm, but so is the cold input. When I turn the hot on, the cold pipe get cold real quick, which seems like that's the way it should be.
Any advice? The only thing that I can point to that the first set of plumbers did was to attach the hose and they must have drained some of the water. On Ruud's website, the instructions say that if you are going to drain your heater, you should shut the gas off. I don't know how much they drained or if they shut the gas off. Could this draining (if it occured) with the gas not shut off be causing my issues? Please help.
I have no qualms about calling a plumber in to fix this, but if there are some things I can do to trouble shoot, I'd like to try. Thanks.
Attachments
Last edited: