Where to cut a cramped water heater cold line?
Tight clearance behind the water heater and connections close to the ground prevent pulling the unit out more than six inches from the wall. This leaves no obvious place to cut the cold water line while retaining enough pipe length to make a new connection.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1removing the pipe assembly further back from the teeDid this help you?
- 2cutting downstream of the ball valveDid this help you?
- 3rebuilding the entire piping layout after the valveDid this help you?
- 4Cutting open the wall for accessDid this help you?
- 5Sliding the top forward to pop it off and reveal connectionsDid this help you?
- 6Draining the whole building to replace partsDid this help you?
- 7Contorting behind units to reach shutoff valvesDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Move that cold water shutoff valve to the horizontal above the check valve. That way you don’t have to drain the whole building to replace the expansion tank.”source ↗
“what the heck do I need to do here with this cold line?”source ↗
“The pipe layout is clean but I agree moving that cold valve would make servicing it way less awkward down the line. Nothing worse than having to contort yourself behind a unit just to shut off a valve”source ↗
“Agree on valve location. Think about vacuum breaker, check valve, even replacing the whole heater. Can’t pull it out with the expansion tank live, unless the depth deceives me”source ↗
“I couldn't get a good picture behind the heater. The connections are down close to the ground same with the power supply. I can't pull it out very far from the wall. Only about 6".”source ↗
“for the one picture, I just don't understand WHERE to cut the cold line to make it have enough pipe for to connect to.”source ↗
Where this came up
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