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I got a call from a customer that was having problems getting hot water. He had a 75 gallon water heater with a recirculating pump on it (the recirculating pump pumps hot water through a loop in the house so you get hot water within seconds rather than minutes). The complaint was that they would sometimes get hot water immediately and then it would cool off within 2 minutes, and sometimes they wouldn't get the immediate hot water, but rather would have to wait several minutes for hot water to start. They said the problem was intermittent but that it affected all fixtures in the house.
There are many things that could cause the water to cool after it was hot. A dip tube could be broken or cracked, a recirculating pump check valve could be bad, etc. I like to start out with the simple things first, and so I ventured into the garage to look at the recirculating pump.
I was there in the early morning and saw that the pump was plugged into a timer which was plugged into the wall. The first thing I noticed was that the timer was not set to the correct time. It was off by over an hour (coincidentally we started daylight savings time about the time they noticed the problem). I forwarded the timer to the correct time and the pump started pumping. It seems that the "intermittent" hot water problem was only occurring in the early morning when the pump was turned off. Problem solved.
Lesson: check to make sure the timer is set correctly and the pump is running.
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