Vent closed for three years

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brutus

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I just recently discovered that the vent on my roof was closed off- three years after our house was newly built. We had called the builders during the first year and complained about the lack of flush "power". They told us "Well, these new toilets use less water than we are used to and its normal to have to flush two or three times every once in a while. All the other vents were also closed during the first year and it wasn't until building my deck that I opened our dryer vent and had a faceful of lint!!!.
My question is this...Now that I have opened this vent our toilets flush fine but we also had another problem the last three years- Hot water runs out in the shower after 10 minutes EVEN THOUGH anywhere else in the house you can still run steaming hot water for minutes if you wanted. Why the dropoff to cold JUST in the shower...was this related to the vent being closed??
 

Toolaholic

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never heard of plumbing vents closed off

and if you think the dryer vent is tied into the plumbing system, this tells me
you need a plumber to look at your whole house
 

Mikey

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The shower typically draws a higher volume of water than most other fixtures, so if the water heater is marginal, you'll notice it first in the shower. Did you by any chance remove the flow restrictor most showerheads come with these days, or did you install a fancy "rainfall" shower head? It may also be because the water heater thermostat is set too low, so that you're drawing mostly hot water, rather than a mixture of hot & cold, for a good hot shower. Not likely to have anything to do with the vents; I can't imagine why they'd be closed off. Were they just capped at the roof?
 

Finnegan

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Brutus, you have got three different systems going on there. Your dryer vent, plumbing vents and plumbing supply lines.
 

brutus

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tool-I must have not typed my message so it comes out the way I wanted it to sound. I know there is a difference in the dryer vent and the plumbing:) What I was trying to say was after one year of living in the house, I uncapped my dryer vent in the back of my house while building my deck... THEN...two years later I get up on my roof because I noticed the plumbing vent was capped off as well. The whole dryer story was being told to solidify the stupidity of my builders;not me...:)

Mikey- I have the same problem with numerous showerheads; I do not remember removing any flow restrictors. Before your post...worker at home dep told me I might have a safety valve installed behind my shower dial(it's a stand-in shower with one dial for on/off/hot/cold) and that I could "pop that off"...sound correct??
 

Jadnashua

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Shower valves (newer ones anyways) have a hot limit setting, but that would show up from the beginning, not after a few minutes.
 

Cass

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Even though the shower valve shouldn't take 10 min. to react I think the shower valve is the culprit.
 
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