Hot water in toilets and urinals - commercial bldg.

[Limp Arbor]

I work in a 4 story building with standard commercial toilets and
urinals. For some reason when the valve for the spray arm is left on
in the kitchen the toilets and urinals get supplied with hot water.
Kitchen is on the 2nd floor and the warm toilets affect at a minimum
floors 1 through 3. The building has circulator pumps in the
basement.

Could this possibly be by design?

No this is not in WV. It is in NJ in a building less than 10 years
old.

[mike]

Sounds like a huge screw-up to me. Maybe the lowest bidder got the
job.

[LouB]

Never underestimate stupidity!

[dpb]

Limp Arbor wrote:
> I work in a 4 story building with standard commercial toilets and
> urinals. For some reason when the valve for the spray arm is left on
> in the kitchen the toilets and urinals get supplied with hot water.
> Kitchen is on the 2nd floor and the warm toilets affect at a minimum
> floors 1 through 3. The building has circulator pumps in the
> basement.
>
> Could this possibly be by design?

b) No

a) My conjecture would be there's a recirculating valve for the hot
water that has failed allowing crossover.

In a large building there's always the outside chance that a supply line
got crossed somewhere but the indication here that's not the issue is
the correlation w/ the spray arm not all the time.

--

[Lefty]

"Limp Arbor" <limp_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:fe6c1cac-9dc2-4c81...@d4g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...

You either haver a bad check valve in the recirc line, or you need to add
one.

HTH Lefty.

[Larry The Snake Guy]

I don't know where check valves would normally be in a system like
this, but what's happening is that when this valve is left on, it
creates a path between the hot side and the cold side without allowing
the water to exit when the sprayer is not in use. Also, the
recirculating pump must be supplying greater pressure to the hot side
than the cold. You could install check valves at that sink...or remove
the sprayer so people don't leave it on...

[Larry The Snake Guy]

To be clear, you would need the check valve on the cold side at the
sink, although it wouldn't hurt to put them on both sides.

[Stormin Mormon]

My father had a similar problem in a residence, with a
temperature control mixing valve. He ended up buying two
check valves, and install them. End of problem.

Many stores, their sprayer has a squeeze valve, and it's
possible to leave hot and cold turned on at the mixing
faucet. The syptomatic thing is to have the restaurant put
check valves under their sink.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.

"Limp Arbor" <limp_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:fe6c1cac-9dc2-4c81...@d4g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...

[Stormin Mormon]

Do you mean remove the squeeze valve from the sprayer?

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.

"Larry The Snake Guy" <ldfi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:31035d84-e77d-49f0...@z34g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...

[Larry The Snake Guy]

On Sep 15, 5:35 pm, "Stormin Mormon"

<cayoung61**spambloc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Do you mean remove the squeeze valve from the sprayer?

Sorry, what I meant was that one option would be to remove the whole
sprayer mechanism (including the valve) which might mean replacing the
faucet. If the sprayer gets used a lot, that might not be a good
option. Or maybe they could get a sprayer without a lever on it. That
way they are forced to turn off the faucet...

If they like the sprayer, adding check valves under the sink would
probably be a better option, which should take someone with a little
plumbing experience 5 minutes if you can find check valves with the
same thread size as the faucet lines (and if there are cutoff valves
at the sink).

[Red Green]

Limp Arbor <limp_...@hotmail.com> wrote in news:fe6c1cac-9dc2-4c81-9aba-
0a3bac...@d4g2000vbm.googlegroups.com:

First thing I wondered was how do you know this?!

[Bob Villa]

Larry in dead-on about this...if you put a valve (sprayer) after a
mixing valve it allows a back-feed when there is a demand on the
cold...water passes through the mixer from hot to cold. HTMS

bob_v

[stan]

On Sep 15, 5:50 pm, dpb <n...@non.net> wrote:
> In a large building there's always the outside chance that a supply line
> got crossed somewhere but the indication here that's not the issue is
> the correlation w/ the spray arm not all the time.

.
.
Like the case quite a few years back where the oxygen lines in a
hospital got crossed with another gas supply.
Apparently the 'acceptance' tests did not include 'actually breathing'
from the oxygen equipment!
It all seems rather basic, after the fact!
For example. Does the electricity work? Plug something in and see if
it works; eh? If the electrical item dies or doesn't
work .................... !

[Limp Arbor]

On Sep 15, 5:34 pm, "Stormin Mormon"

<cayoung61**spambloc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> My father had a similar problem in a residence, with a
> temperature control mixing valve. He ended up buying two
> check valves, and install them. End of problem.
>
> Many stores, their sprayer has a squeeze valve, and it's
> possible to leave hot and cold turned on at the mixing
> faucet. The syptomatic thing is to have the restaurant put
> check valves  under their sink.
>
> --
> Christopher A. Young
> Learn more about Jesus
>  www.lds.org
> .
>

> "Limp Arbor" <limp_ar...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

>
> news:fe6c1cac-9dc2-4c81...@d4g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
> I work in a 4 story building with standard commercial
> toilets and
> urinals.  For some reason when the valve for the spray arm
> is left on
> in the kitchen the toilets and urinals get supplied with hot
> water.
> Kitchen is on the 2nd floor and the warm toilets affect at a
> minimum
> floors 1 through 3.  The building has circulator pumps in
> the
> basement.
>
> Could this possibly be by design?
>
> No this is not in WV.  It is in NJ in a building less than
> 10 years
> old.

I finally went to the kitchen and took a look. What is happening is
the H&C faucets are being left on and because of the circulator pumps
keeping the hot side pressurized whenever someone goes to a water
fountain or flushes a toilet the hot is crossing through the faucet
into the cold water.

Weird that a check valve is not required in this situation or the
inspector missed it.

Thanks.

[Stormin Mormon]

Good detective work. Thanks for sharing with the rest of us,
always good to learn.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.

"Limp Arbor" <limp_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

news:5723f613-ee91-488c...@z28g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...

[hr(bob) hofmann@att.net]

How was the hot water discovered????

[Limp Arbor]

On Sep 16, 11:10 pm, "hr(bob) hofm...@att.net" <hrhofm...@att.net>
wrote:

It was deep too...

[DerbyDad03]

I had a similar (and intermittent) problem in my house, but the warm
water was supplied to *all* cold fixtures, basically "reversing" what
came out of all of my faucets, showers, toilets, etc. Warm from cold
taps, cold from warm.

We finally tracked it down to the "Y" hose on the spigot outside the
garage. I have both a hot water and cold water spigot by the garage.
The cold supply is before the pressure reducer, thus at street
pressure. The hot supply, which obviously comes from the WH, is after
the pressure reducer.

If we leave the spigots open, with a hose attached and the spray
nozzle closed, the higher pressure cold will force it's way into the
hot water line, back to the WH and force HW up through the cold water
pipes.

This puzzled us for many years, since it only happened on rare
occasions. One day I noticed it happening as my son was washing his
car and a few simple tests confirmed the cause.

[Josh]

This is a very good examply of why vacuum breakers on hose bibbs (a
form of check valve) aren't just nuisance code, but are a good idea --
here you were just feeding your potable water through a bit of Y hose;
maybe a health issue, maybe not, but imagine the same hose sitting in
the kids' wading pool (after they've used it for whatever kids do), or
the muddy pool of much near the garden. All it takes is a low
pressure event (within your house or from a neighbor or fire hydrant
etc), and that dirty water is sucked into your house plumbing, into
your next glass of "fresh" water.

I couldn't stand the vacuum breakers our builder installed because
they sprayed water at you every time you turned off the faucet, but
after replacing the whole hose bibb because they were crap and leaking
elsewhere, I found that the new ones work great without spraying.

Josh

[DerbyDad03]

> Josh- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Oh come on...wading pool water is all that bad...<g>

http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=5344349d-8fbc-446e-8ae5-03a924025f8c&chunkiid=161688

[DanG]

Very common for these check valves to wear out - normal
maintenance item to keep them functioning. If you don't have one
on at least the cold line, the plumber either didn't know or took
a short cut.

--
______________________________
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)
dgri...@7cox.net

"Stormin Mormon" <cayoung61**spamblock##@hotmail.com> wrote in
message news:h8s8ok$pt8$1...@news.eternal-september.org...

[Mike]

On Sep 15, 3:08 pm, Limp Arbor <limp_ar...@hotmail.com> wrote:

We don't even have indoor plumbing in certain areas of WV, so please
leave us out of this.

[Limp Arbor]

I know. Good friend of mine is from Moatstown, WV.

[DerbyDad03]

On Sep 17, 1:53 pm, Josh <no_need_to_s...@nobody.org> wrote:

> Josh- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

re: imagine the same hose sitting in the kids' wading pool (after
they've used it for whatever kids do), or the muddy pool of mulch near
the garden.

You now, the more I thought about your comments, the more I doubt it
would be an issue in my case.

Let's start with the fact that the only time the hose could suck water
out of the pool/puddle is if the hose was open. Now, if the hose was
open and both the hot and cold water were on, then the force of cold
water would be pushing water *out* of the hose, not pushing the hot
water back into the house. If this weren't the case, I would never had
be able to fill the wading pool with warm water or for that matter,
ever get warm water out of the hose, which I do.

The only time the problem occurs in when the hose end is closed and
the cold water has no place to go but back into the house.