It’s safe to say we’ve all experienced the inconvenience of having to wait for hot water to arrive at the faucet or shower — most of us every morning. You’ve probably grown accustomed to waiting several seconds or even a minute or two, depending on the distance to your bathroom or kitchen from your water heater in your basement, garage or utility closet on the opposite side of the house. The longer that distance, the longer the wait, the bigger the annoyance.

Although PRV issues usually happen slowly, sometimes problems can crop up overnight. If you have no water pressure throughout the house on both the hot and cold, your PRV may be bad. Make sure you check both the hot and cold water. If there is good pressure on the cold and not the hot it may be an issue with the water heater or the fixture itself.

In this article, your local plumbing experts explain the symptoms of a bad pressure reducing valve that may need to be replaced.

A hot-water recirculation system delivers hot water to a faucet, shower or appliance in seconds, eliminating the usual water-wasting wait. The system does so by recirculating the water that remained in the pipes and eventually turned cold, back to the water heater, through either the cold-water line or a dedicated return line.

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Hot-water recirculation dramatically reduces water waste. With time and temperature sensors, hot-water recirculation pumps can control when the recirculation kicks on, ensuring that energy is not constantly being wasted.

If your faucets, toilets, or appliances need frequent repair, this could be a symptom of high water pressure. Most fixtures are rated for a maximum working pressure of 80 psi. If you have a pressure that is continually higher than this, parts will wear out and things will break more quickly.

Some hot-water recirculation pumps are built into the water heater itself. An integrated recirculation pump is ideal if your home lacks a dedicated return line, and you want to avoid the cost of adding one.

Pressure reducingvalve UK

On homes built after 2010, it is more common to find them in other places. Check in the garage for a wall panel with plumbing pipes inside. We have also located them in the walls under stairs, closets, and laundry rooms.

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Sometimes it can be a combination of these contributing factors. For more confirmation that the sound is caused by the PRV, go to where it is located and listen. It should be noticeably louder right next to the PRV.

Not only is this inconvenient (and downright uncomfortable if you’re standing in the shower), but a typical American home annually wastes thousands of gallons of perfectly usable potable water down the drain, thanks to lengthy wait times at hot-water outlets in the bath and kitchen.

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Another option is to purchase a “crossover kit” that is sold with the water heater and acts as a substitute for a return line.

When PRVs start to wear out, they can cause many strange issues with the water pressure throughout your home. As we go through these different symptoms, it is important to know that they will usually occur all over the house at the same time when they are caused by a failed PRV. If you are having any of these issues on only a single fixture in your home, then the issue probably isn’t with the PRV.

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It is sometimes possible to adjust the pressure at the PRV to lower it. However, if the PRV is more than a few years old, this is often risky. By attempting to adjust it, it may stop working altogether or even start leaking.

The PRV won’t last forever, though. They are made with rubber parts and springs that will eventually wear out or get gummed up with particles in the water. Usually, PRVs fail slowly over time. It may take a while for you to notice there is an issue, especially if your usage habits aren’t very demanding.

Pressure reducingvalve Manual

Repetitive knocking or consistent humming noises that seem to come from the walls when you run different fixtures are often caused by a failed PRV.

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Few things are as essential as plumbing fixtures when maintaining and enhancing your home’s comfort. These fixtures help keep the water flowing where it’s needed

Sometimes the valve itself will burst and start leaking. If you have a muddy or flooded spot in the flower bed, this could be the reason.

Some recirculation pumps can serve as a separate, add-on component that uses a dedicated pipe loop for hot-water recirculation.

If your water pressure doesn’t seem to be as strong as it once was or you notice a significant loss of pressure when you use more than one fixture at the same time, your pressure reducing valve may be bad. If you don’t usually use different tubs and showers at the same time, you may first notice this issue when you have guests over and the demand is higher than normal.

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Instead of wasting energy by having hot water flow through the system continuously, some water heaters have an integral display on the front of the unit that allows homeowners to program the recirculation system to operate at specified times.

So why does the water coming from your “hot”-water faucet or shower run cold at first before finally turning hot? When that outlet was last turned on, hot water flowed through the pipes, right?

The Pressure Reducing Valve (PRV) protects your home from water pressure that is higher than what the plumbing fixtures in your home were designed to handle. By code, water pressure inside your house should be between 40-80 pounds per square inch (psi). If the water pressure delivered by your water supplier is higher than that, a pressure reducing valve is installed on the main water line serving the home to bring this down to an appropriate level.

The most efficient “traditional” recirculation method would use a combination of both a temperature sensor and a timer to activate the system.

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So what’s the solution? Is it possible to get truly “instantaneous” hot water? Yes, with a hot-water recirculation system that delivers hot water with virtually no wait time.

A recirculation pump can operate 24/7. But the energy savings would be nonexistent if the external circulator were always on and continuously recirculating hot water.

But once the outlet was shut off, the remaining warm water in the pipes did not return to the water heater for reheating. Instead, it stayed in the pipes and eventually turned cold. When the outlet was next turned on, this resting cold water exited the pipes first, ahead of the incoming hot water from the water heater.

Hopefully, this information helps you out. If you have any questions, feel free to give Legacy Plumbing a call. We are happy to help in any way we can.

These noises can also be caused by other things as well, such as a failed expansion tank, quick closing solenoid valves on new appliances, bad vacuum breakers, faulty valves with loose washers, worn-out toilets fill valves, improperly strapped pipes, etc.

Whether you choose to install an external recirculation pump or go with a fully integrated system, the benefits for both are clear. A hot-water recirculation pump eliminates the need to wait for hot water by recirculating the water through your plumbing system, keeping hot water flowing and ready for the moment someone turns on the faucet or shower.

Legacy Plumbing’s service area is on the north side of the Dallas Metroplex. Most of the PRVs around here are located on the main water line right where it comes up under the perimeter of the home in the front flower bed.

One type of recirculation system — and the focus of this blog — is a closed-loop, pump-assisted, hot-water recirculation system.