Some time ago, maybe 6 months or so, I noticed the hot water flow in my bathtub starting to slow. It continued to slow for a few weeks, until I finally gave up and removed the cylinder (it's a single handle) and cleaned it out to investigate. In the back, wedged into the check valves, were some blue-green pieces. I cleaned them out, reassembled it, and it worked again when I next filled the bath. However, when I went to take a bath the next time after that, it had slowed to a dribble on the hot again.
To make a long story short, this has since happened again and again, with cleaning the chunks out of the valve resulting in one more filled bath of good flow before it would clog up again. I finally went down to my utility sink in the basement (this is a single story ranch home, with copper plumbing on the supply lines and a water softener as we have very hard water where I live), and began to flush things out there. Between the disconnected supply hoses for the laundry machine (which I haven't used in some time) and the faucet, I managed to flush out quite a bit of the material from the pipes, but it keeps coming!
Experimenting a bit, I've found that the best way to try and flush it out is to cause a water hammer by rapidly turning on/off the quarter-turn boiler drain valves (I often turn off the hot water in the bath very rapidly). I have numerous arresters in the home; a few of the older "open air" ones, which I believe are now only on the cold lines to the toilets, a several of the newer kind with a plunger inside to keep them from filling with water over time. All of the latter were added by me in the last few years, but I suspect are unrelated to the problem, as I have also added some to the cold supply lines and have not experienced any problems there.
I think the problem lies much further back, as it's affecting all faucets that use the hot water--which points me toward an issue relating to the water softener or the water heater, and possibly exacerbated by the thermal shock of hot water after the pipes have cooled or the physical shock of a water hammer. However, I'm not sure what to look at first, so I've collected some samples by sieving out the pieces that are flowing out. I'm also at the tail end of a kitchen remodel, and had some of the old riser pipe for the kitchen faucet supply lines that I replaced, so I cut a sample off of each. I'm not sure which was hot, but I strongly suspect it was the one on the left in the picture, due to the color similarity with the matter discharged. However, I didn't notice any large chunks in the pipe, but that might be due to the fact that it was riser pipe (the particles that come out float in water, so I suspect if they're accumulating in the pipe, they form at the top of the long horizontal runs).
Higher resolution images of these can be found here for the former and the latter.
So, any ideas on how to fix this, or what is even causing the problem in the first place?
To make a long story short, this has since happened again and again, with cleaning the chunks out of the valve resulting in one more filled bath of good flow before it would clog up again. I finally went down to my utility sink in the basement (this is a single story ranch home, with copper plumbing on the supply lines and a water softener as we have very hard water where I live), and began to flush things out there. Between the disconnected supply hoses for the laundry machine (which I haven't used in some time) and the faucet, I managed to flush out quite a bit of the material from the pipes, but it keeps coming!
Experimenting a bit, I've found that the best way to try and flush it out is to cause a water hammer by rapidly turning on/off the quarter-turn boiler drain valves (I often turn off the hot water in the bath very rapidly). I have numerous arresters in the home; a few of the older "open air" ones, which I believe are now only on the cold lines to the toilets, a several of the newer kind with a plunger inside to keep them from filling with water over time. All of the latter were added by me in the last few years, but I suspect are unrelated to the problem, as I have also added some to the cold supply lines and have not experienced any problems there.
I think the problem lies much further back, as it's affecting all faucets that use the hot water--which points me toward an issue relating to the water softener or the water heater, and possibly exacerbated by the thermal shock of hot water after the pipes have cooled or the physical shock of a water hammer. However, I'm not sure what to look at first, so I've collected some samples by sieving out the pieces that are flowing out. I'm also at the tail end of a kitchen remodel, and had some of the old riser pipe for the kitchen faucet supply lines that I replaced, so I cut a sample off of each. I'm not sure which was hot, but I strongly suspect it was the one on the left in the picture, due to the color similarity with the matter discharged. However, I didn't notice any large chunks in the pipe, but that might be due to the fact that it was riser pipe (the particles that come out float in water, so I suspect if they're accumulating in the pipe, they form at the top of the long horizontal runs).
Higher resolution images of these can be found here for the former and the latter.
So, any ideas on how to fix this, or what is even causing the problem in the first place?
