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Question: Just developed this weirdness a couple of weeks ago. When turning on the cold water tap, we get warm (sometimes almost hot) water for a while -- sometimes up to a minute and a half or so. This seems to happen with every faucet in the house. Checking the pipes, I find the cold water pipe is warm almost everywhere in the basement, even the feed pipe into the hot water heater. Even a cold water pipe that leads to nothing right now and is 6 feet away from a pipe that water flows through (although still connected). Is it possible that one of the coils on the electric hot water heater has gone out and the top one is working overtime to compensate, heating up the heater so much that it heats the feeding pipe which heats up the entire cold water system? Or other thoughts?
Answer: Do some detective work. Run the cold water till the cold pipes are all cool again. Wait for the heater to turn on (or run hot water till it does) and feel the cold supply to the heater to determine if the heat is coming *out* of the heater toward all the other places. If it *is, it may just be a case of thermal expansion. As the water heats up, it expands and has to go somewhere. If that doesn't appear to be the situation, you may have a cross-connection between Hot and Cold supplies. Frequent causes are a worn out single-handle faucet (Moen in particular) or maybe a washing machine solenoid valve that leaks between Hot and Cold. You may be able to find out by closing off supply valves to these fixtures. The water isn't hot coming out of the well tank (or the city supply), is it??
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