3 Possible Reasons Why Your Shower Isn't Producing Hot Water
Posted on: 10 November 2015
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When you turn on the shower, you expect the water to be nice and warm. The last thing you want is the water to turn ice cold in the middle of your shower. Unfortunately, it isn't always a case of waiting on the hot water heater to generate more hot water. There are plenty of other things that can cause your shower to stop producing hot water. If this happened to you, here are a couple places to look.
Faucets
The first thing to do is look to see if the problem is just affecting your shower or if it involves your entire home. Turn the faucets on elsewhere in the house to check and see what the temperature is. When your water starts out hot and then ends up cooling down really fast, it might be an issue with the burner in your water heater. Water that never gets hot could be the result of a bad dip tube. However, when all of the faucets are working fine and providing you with a steady stream of warm water, you need to look toward the shower as being the source of the problem.
Cross-Connected Pipes
To help balance cold and hot water, cross-connected pipes ended up being installed in homes. These tend to be found more in older homes than the modern ones today where a mixer is used in place of the pipes. When using the hand sprayer in your shower, the water should never be scalding if the main shower is off. If it is, that often means your cross-connected pipes are to blame.
Shower Valve
Your shower valve is what helps to mix the cold and hot water to provide you with the absolute perfect water temperature. Most of the time, the washer or O-ring has worn out. This causes your valve to struggle to mix the water properly. Even though you are turning the valve to hot, you are only going to get cold water. To repair the value, you often need to change out the washers and various components to get it back in proper working order.
Instead of dealing with an icy shower, you can get the problem taken care of quickly and easily by looking into one of the things above. With the help of a professional plumber, like Bowman's Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc., you can narrow down the problem and get your hot water working properly in no time.