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Everyone - thank you all so much for the thoughts and ideas on this. As a few of you thought, the root cause was indeed a hard freeze. We have not had temperatures up here like this and I was naive about the amount of heat I needed to apply to get things to unfreeze. A week later, a bunch of new...

The 41/44 PSI in the pressure tank is being measured using a tire pressure gauge (that came from a heated garage) that we use with some frequency for tires, so feels pretty reliable.

Thanks for the thoughts, Valveman. We closed the contacts with a screwdriver (nudged the plate under the contacts to get them to connect) and then turned on the power, but the contacts just pop open immediately. I'll try this again, but this time with the faucet open to see if there's any water...

Bannerman - thanks very much for your thoughts. I'm not seeing you point the finger at pressure switch or other component, so perhaps you and John G. are right and the pipes are still frozen. Seems unlikely as I had a space heater blowing hot air at the pipes for 48 hours, but it's been freaky...

Hi, we lost water pressure from our well and I'm looking for some help troubleshooting. We recently had some much colder temps than usual (typical winter temps can get down to the 10s, but recent temps were down to –15). Our well head, pressure tank and switch are all housed within a heated pump...

I know this thread is a few years old, but as the OP, I wanted to write back and update with the resolution in case others find this thread in the future and it is helpful. It turns out that the problem causing the hot water to circulate into the cold water pipes was actually at the 2nd floor...

WorthFlorida - thanks for the help on this. I went back up and checked the t-stat relay and everything looked great - no sign of damage on the relay contacts at all. I ran the heaters as usual to test again and everything seems to be fine. I am now thinking that a weird combination of events...

Thanks - unfortunately I can't get the model of the thermostat as I can't get back to the house right now, but I'll take a look when I'm back up there. There is definitely a metal box right near the panel that clicks when the heat goes on and off. It looks like one of those relays - it's wall...

Hi, I have a set of three 1500w electric baseboards that are tied to a single thermostat. I noticed this weekend that one of the three baseboards is running constantly and won't turn off when I turn the thermostat way down. The other two units properly shut off when I turn down the t-stat. I'm...

Hmm... The spring loaded check valve is an interesting idea. It would be easy to install one on the end of the flex copper line that feeds the WH, but I'm betting that it's not safe to install the check valve between the WH and the expansion tank on the cold side (city water / rest of cold...

Hi Reach4, Yes, the big copper cold pipe above the expansion tank is warm and it's backing up into the section that tees off to a pex line that goes to the 2nd floor bath, where this issue is most prevalent. I tried to show that in the diagram included in my first post. The ground bypass goes...

Thanks, Jim. I tried yesterday to get the nipple off to replace the nipple and heat trap. I knew there was a chance that I could wreck the nipple, and since this water heater is 14 years old, I decided I'd give it the old college try, but if I couldn't get it off I'd consider it a sign that it...

Thanks, Terry - we don't have any instant hots in our plumbing, so I'm leaning towards the heat trap failure being the likely culprit. Do you think a loop in the copper supply line would be a viable alternative to the mechanical heat trap in the nipple? Or will we have to replace the nipple /...

Well dang, that certainly would make sense. I didn't know that a heat trap was a thing. Here's a picture of the actual setup and the inlet (cold is on the right in the first picture). A few follow up questions on this: Would the heat trap be integrated into the nipple, and does that look...

Hello, I'm having an issue with warm water being delivered to a cold water fixture. Our water heater is in the basement. When I turn on the cold sink faucet in the 2nd floor bathroom, we get about 5 seconds of cold water, followed by about 15 seconds of warm water (85 degrees) and then we get...

Thanks, guys. I wondered if heating an entire cold tank of water could possibly open the temp/pressure relief valve. I thought about trying to test it for a few more cycles, but the fact that the water was so dang hot caused me to bet more on a bad t-stat (bad t-stat also seemed like it could...

Awesome - thanks, Jerry!

Well it's been a month, but I was finally able to get back to the suspected blown element on my water heater. I drained the tank and pulled the lower heating element - it's definitely blown. See photo here: https://imgur.com/a/fJ7wxRN I changed the element, filled the unit with water and turned...

Ah! Thanks, I wasn't sure what the OL meant - that's very helpful. It'll be a few weeks before I can get back to the house, but I'll report back after replacing the element.

Thanks, Phog - I measured zero ohms between the bottom element and the tank body (see third image down here: https://imgur.com/a/9BYkizE.