


No matter what caused your relief valve to start leaking, you should contact a professional plumber like Cabrillo as soon as possible. What should you do when your water heater’s relief valve is leaking? The valve might not seal properly, for instance, or the valve can get stuck and remain open (allowing water to continuously drain out). If the problem is a faulty valve, then you might have an actual leak. This may seem like a “leak,” but it’s really just the relief valve doing its job. In the first case, the valve will drain water out of the discharge pipe as explained above. Your water heater’s relief valve can start leaking for one of two reasons: either the valve was triggered to open because of excessive temperature or pressure, or the valve itself is faulty. Why might your water heater’s relief valve start leaking? Cold water is then added to the tank in order to lower the temperature and pressure inside. If the temperature‘s or pressure in your tank exceeds a certain level (often times 210 degrees and 150 psi), the relief valve opens up and allows some water to drain out of the tank. The temperature pressure relief valve is a safety mechanism that’s used to avoid this problem. If that pressure gets too high, your water heater runs the risk of exploding! When water is heated up inside of a water heater, thermal expansion causes the pressure inside of the tank to build up. Today we’re going to answer the question, “Why is my water heater’s relief valve leaking?” and explain what you should do if it happens in your home! What is the purpose of your water heater’s relief valve? So when the relief valve starts leaking, Bay Area homeowners can be quite concerned. But, if we see significant damage due to wear and tear or just old age, then we might suggest that you invest in a new hot water cylinder – financially, you’ll be far better off in the long run by ordering a replacement.Temperature pressure relief valves play a vital role in protecting the safety of your water heater and your home. In some situations, a minor repair will greatly improve the performance of your system.

As we’ve said before, we are hot water cylinder experts. If you have any concerns at all about your hot water cylinder, contact us and we’ll come to your place and sort things out for you. If the dripping continues, the valves are probably faulty and you need to contact us.If the dripping stops, this is normal thermal expansion.Turn off the power supply to the tank for five minutes.Here’s a simple test to determine what os going on: The dripping relief pipe you’re noticing is probably experiencing normal thermal expansion, but it could also have a faulty valve. These days, however, cold water relief valves are installed to the inlet side of the hot water cylinder to save hot water. In instances where a secondary safety vacuum break was not fitted, the water cylinder has exploded, blowing roofs off houses and buildings moving on their foundations. In some cases, it has had disastrous consequences. They’re obviously unaware that it is perfectly normal.

We know of some cases where these vent or relief pipes have been blocked off by people in an attempt to stop the dripping. That extra water has to go somewhere! Hot water cylinders are manufactured to relieve this expanded hot water through an open vent pipe on the roof, or via a relief valve and pipe to an outside wall or drain. When the water in your cylinder is heated from cold, the volume can increase by as much as 3% in a hot water cylinder with a capacity of 180 litres, that is as much as 5.4 litres. That’s what we mean by thermal expansion. Your cylinder is just doing what it is designed to do. But in most cases, it’s simply a case of normal thermal expansion and nothing to be concerned about. At first glance, any hot water cylinder overflow might be alarming when you first see it. As hot water cylinder experts dealing with installation, repair and service, we receive plenty of enquiries about overflowing cylinders.
