Hot water in cold system

[rra640]

I tried a searh on this subject with no success. We recently installed a new gas water heater (tank type). I live in Phoenix, and in the summer, our cold water is normally warm. Now that it's cold, I have noticed that the cold water feels warmer than it did before the new water heater was installed. How can this be? The install was just a remove and replace and nothing else in the plumbing system has changed.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[suemarkp]

Perhaps you have a bad single lever faucete that is allowing the hot to bleed over to the cold. Is it more noticeable at a certain faucet? Also, if you run the cold water for a while (a minute or two), does the temperature stay about the same or does it get cooler or warmer?

[rra640]

I thought that at first, but it appears to be on all the faucets and even the outdoor faucet seams warmer than it should. It's pushing 80 during the day and in the 50's at night.

It doesn't get Hot like it does when you have the faucet over to the hot side. It's just warm... like it's mixing somehow.

If I turn on the cold only it gets warm and stays warm. I ran it for about 2 minutes.

[suemarkp]

Turn off the hot water shut off valve to every faucet that is single handle. Run the cold for a few minutes and see if it actually gets cold instead of warm. If so, turn on the hot water shutoffs one at a time until the find the culprit.

The only handles you may have a problem with would be bathtubs or showers if they are single handle. If one of those is bypassing, I don't know how you shut off the hot water feed to them unless there happens to be a shutoff in the pipe feeding it (which is unlikely). You could try running the cold water from somewhere and see if one of the hot water pipes feeding a shower valve is warmer than the others. But this may be hard to do.

Finally, do you have one of those hot water circulators that help give you instant hot water at your faucets instead of waiting for it to get there? If so, perhaps it isn't plumbed right or it has a check valve that has failed.

[rra640]

Thanks for the advice. I'll try what you suggested. No, I do not have any kink or recirulating pump for hot water.

Thanks!