Hot water coming out of cold

[romanallison]

I have a Price Pfister shower faucet, it is a single lever turn handle type. When I turn it to the cold water setting I get hot water for the first few minutes. It then goes cold but it is very hard to regulate warm water, I either get hot or cold. I was assuming it is a valve within the cartridge that separates the hot and cold. I am also getting hot water coming out of the sink tap for about 30 seconds now as well. Will replacing the cartridge in the shower faucet solve both problems or is something else going on with the plumbing?

[Chris Lewis]

According to :

Is it a pressure balance faucet? Do you have continuous hot water circulation for "instant heat"?

I could see a pressure balance faucet malfunctioning and doing something like this, but not so that it would affect another fixture. If you have continuous hot water circulation, some setups will have warm water out of the cold faucet for a short period.

Otherwise, it could be a cross-connect between hot and cold somewhere else in the plumbing. Don't laugh, I saw a setup where the HWT outlet was directly cross-connected with the cold side, and it went undetected for _years_, before someone used to how it _should_ work (me) said "it shouldn't be working like this" (hot wasn't very hot, and didn't last long), and spending half an hour tracing the pipes.

[DerbyDad03]

Sounds like a cross connect between the hot and cold somewhere in the house, possibly with a pressure differential for added excitement.

I have hot and cold water spigots at the front of my house, connected by a Y hose. The cold is directly off the street pressure, the hot is obviously at house pressure. If I leave both spigots open with a closed hose attached, the street pressure cold water will force the hot water back into the pipes and essentially reverse the flow of water in my entire house. Cold water comes of hot taps, hot then warm water comes of cold taps, toilets flush warm, etc.

Trust me, the first few times it happened I was completely baffled, especially since it went away soon afterwards. It finally dawned on me that it only happened when we were using the hot water outside.

[romanallison]

Thanks for responding. It's the original faucet installed by the builder, I don't think it is a pressure balance faucet. It hasn't given us any problems for 7 years. We have the typical tank type water heater. Could it be cross-connected and not detected for 7 years (I use the shower every day)? We are not getting the "(hot wasn't very hot, and didn't last long).

[Tom G]

When I lived in Arizona, I had a similar problem. Bathroom faucet (cold) would start out pretty warm and then go cold when the cold water faucet was turned on. Turned out that a hot water pipe had ruptured under the slab and soaked the ground with hot water, thus heating the water in the cold lines to the bathroom. I figured about 30,000 gallons of hot water had gone into the ground before I figured out the problem. My wife could hear water running all of the time but I told her she was "nuts". Of course, being the husband, I couldn't admit that I had become pretty deaf and that she perhaps wasn't "mumbling" all of the time when she talked to me.

Tom G.

[bontualrfoley]

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[Chris Lewis]

According to :

PB faucets attempt to keep the water temperature constant when hot or cold are drawn somewhere else in the house. I suspect virtually all show faucets installed in the last 10 years or so are PB in order to ensure that the water temperature never exceeds a given value. You can often tell by seeing if there's any sort of limit stop under the knob with an adjustment screw.

I believe PB devices sometimes get crudded up (with very hard water or grit) and "stick".

The other symptom was that the water temperature was erratic. Without _any_ other water being drawn in the house, the temperature sometimes changed abruptly.

[jim]

Check the cold water dip tube on your water heater as it sounds like it may be rotted off replace it and you will get hot again the pb in the shower tap is not adjustable and will not affect the lav tap.