Diehard
In Remembrance
If you had a water heater guy and a plumber say your installation was correct, I would have to say they don't know what their talking about. Sorry!
First off...stop wasting your time checking static pressures. The only thing that will effect static pressure is a closed valve or the elevation/height change of the gauge location.Ok, I tried bypassing the softener, but that made no difference. I get the same 70+ psi static pressure at the washing machine hot hose bib, but it drops to 10 psi when I turn on a hot faucet. If I try to run two hot faucets at the same time, there's almost no flow at all. Clearly a flow problem. I confirmed there is plenty of flow exiting the WH so it seems there must be a blockage in between there and whichever the first faucet in the circuit is (since every faucet in the house has low hot water flow). I tried to back flush the hot water line from the farthest faucet from the WH all the way back to the WH outlet, but that farthest faucet has an odd rectangular shaped end and aerator so I'm having trouble effectively blocking it to let the cold water flow into the hot side once any pressure starts to build up.
It would seem the next move is to try to figure out where the blockage might be, but I'm not sure how to do that. My house is 60 years old and the WH was relocated from inside to outside at some point before I bought the place. Some of the pipes were replaced at that point, but I'm not even sure how much of it was done. I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to end up re-piping the whole damn house to solve this.
Any advice on a next move would be greatly appreciated.
The guy said he rebuilt the PRV. Maybe,,,, something wasn't put together right or its just shot. Can the OP put a nipple andYou can replace parts hoping to hit on the problem or you can do some flowing pressure testing and narrow it down.
OP...Please respond to all questions in Post #26. Thanks.
High pressure will not translate into flow if there is a blockage, so I am guessing somewhere at the WH is where the problem lies. Flow is dependent on friction or occlusion.
First off, pull the nipples and remove any "heat trap" that may be there.
Sometimes a floating ball in the dielectric nipples, sometimes a rubber flap assembly just at the tank threads.
If none of those items are present, then flow test out of the water heater into a bucket or hose to outside.
I checked the flow of hot water coming OUT of the water heater and it appears fine, but I'll try one more time and remove the nipple to check for a heat trap.