Had a roof leak in the rain before last. Couldn’t find anything obvious (it’s a tar and gravel roof and not finding anything obvious was not a huge surprise). Cleared loose rocks and slathered the likely area with almost a gallon of Henry’s and no leak from last night’s pretty heavy rain. Yeah!
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is this an instantaneous ? the crawl space relocation allows for the venting?
seems like the guy knows what’s up.
chewing thing is a non-issue. the pipes will likely be supported via clamp to the wooden structural members. No gnawing issues in my experience, especially from suspended pipe
The model is the Rinnai RUR199in.
It’s tankless and it has some sort of circulator so that the hot water comes out instantaneously.
He picked a spot in the crawl space specifically so it wouldn’t have any problems with venting, etc. It’s really far from where the water needs to go, but he’s not worried about that.
As far as the chewing thing is concerned, most of the piping will be PEX. I talked to him again since last post and he says that he has only seen a rat chew through PEX once in 20+ yrs and it was an atypical situation which my crawl space does not lend itself to.
What does the clamping to wood members do with respect to rodents chewing through the piping.
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ehh I was just visualizing a rodent having to maneuver, kinda upside down, having to support its own weight, clawing into material, if it were to access pex piping so located.
regardless, no worries.
and yeah, the recirculating system on an instantaneous(tankless)is interesting. I understand how they work with traditional, tanked heater, but not with an instantaneous.
concept is simple… have a loop of piping that reaches the most remote plumbing fixture, to ensure when called upon, the faucet provides hot water without inordinate wait (the hot water having to travel from the source, displacing the water that cooled in the pipes that travel from point A (the heater) to point B ( the faucet spout, shower head, clothes washing appliance, etc.)
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There’s always asbestos in old homes, but I would cut out a hole in the ceiling anyway.
Is this the top floor? A tiny leak in the roof can be off and on depending on how hard it rains or if it’s windy or I guess ice from up there in the arctic, but they don’t fix themselves.
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Handyman sounds like a clown. Find out what’s leaking and fix it.
eta: He’s not afraid of asbestos, he just doesn’t want to do the work.
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I presume the rain is not leaking onto the floor above the leak in the ceiling.
Probably coming in a sidewall or something and running along a joist.
Shocking the handyman turned out to be wrong and that leaks actually don’t appear and then fix themselves for no reason.
It’s also possible it’s a plumbing vent stack running through the floor with a bad joint over that spot. I’ve seen that happen.
Whatever it is, I doubt it can be found and fixed without opening up the ceiling.
She should send her brother up on the roof and into the attic.
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If it’s rain related and coming down a plumbing vent running through a floor and a wall that can probably be figure out from following the fixtures and looking on the roof and maybe finding an unsealed/improperly installed/damaged roof jack/flashing.
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The flashing and everything else can be correct but it can still leak from the pipe itself. There’s usually no cap on them and any rain that gets in is supposed to drain to the sewer. But plumbers sometimes aren’t very careful about slope in vents, and if they forget to glue a joint it may be such a slow leak that it’s not noticeable for years
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idk yet, but a service call to Canada probably isn’t going to make it onto the schedule.
I have a SIN and everything. International handyman sounds like a can’t-fail career move!
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So, I just got a tankless heater installed. For some reason when the recirculation is on we get warm water when the cold tap is turned on by itself. It’s not hot like what comes out when the hot is turned on. That is much hotter. But it’s not the ice cold water you get when the recirculator is off.
Will call installing plumber tomorrow. Until then, anyone have any guesses about what the problem is?
there’s a cross-connection somewhere, likely at a mixing valve.
do you have a faucet or shower valve that is always on, then a valve at the spout or hose attached to the spout with a valve somewhere on the hose.
like a mop sink?
never mind. that it only occurs when the recirc is on, would preclude that type situation
they may have tied the re-circulation line erroneously into a cold line
that’s my hunch. I still don’t understand how an instantaneous heater does the recirc thing… would be a constant energy draw, which is opposite the entire purpose of the design
It’s not continuously recirculating. There is a smartphone application that you can use to set what times you want it to go (you actually have to use the app, you can’t set it on the heater).
So you might do something like 6-8 AM every morning and 5-8 PM in the evening. Also, if I can also use the phone to turn it other any other time I want for a specified duration. So if I find myself needing to take a a shower at noon, I can turn it on a few minutes in advance with my phone so I won’t have to wait for the hot water.
The problem occurs every time the recirculation is on. If the recirculation is not on, then I get cold water for two minutes and then the same problem occurs.
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interested to know what the plumber finds, please share when you find out. thx
gotta be tied-in to a cold line. so instead of a closed-loop with various outlets to the hot-side of faucets and valves, it’s a closed-loop with one connection to the cold-side of a faucet, valve or toilet, so that when you open the tap with the recirc on… there are 2 actors forcing the flow of water
lol something like that. or there’s an omission of a check-valve or one improperly installed on the system.
this stuff is hard for me to visualize.
I’d say she waits until the problem is identified and she has a quote for the cost to fix it.
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