I have a bad leak in my tub and its making my water heater stay on all day because its hot water leaking. My landlord is a procrastinator so I have to wait awhile for it to get fixed but its jacking up my gas bill so I need a fast solution. So basically I don't want to shut off the cold water, just the hot, until I need to take a shower, etc. If I can do this, how exactly am I supposed to do this? There's a little turning thingy on the pipe that I believe is the hot water, do I just turn that? Hopefully someone can help me, I don't know what to do!

There is generally no turn off valve for the hot water heater either going in or going out. You would have to turn off the water to the entire apartment/house otherwise. Look for the turn off valve and see if there is one. With an electric hot water heater you could have at least tripped the breaker inside the main panel but on gas heaters it's not that easy.

You may have to spring for a repairman to fix the faucet leak in the tub or just be patient and keep paying high gas bills until landlord gets around to fixing it. If you do decide to shut off the gas supply to the hot water heater you will have to relight it each time you want to take a shower and some models are not user friendly when it comes to relighting them. I can be done but it is generally a pain in the neck to do.

Sorry Twinkiedooter, but you are wrong when you say, "There is generally no turn off valve for the hot water heater either going in or going out".

In fact, all plumbing codes that I know of require a shutoff to be installed at the cold water inlet to the water heater. In this manner, SLA92 can shut off the old water shutoff which will effectively shut down the hot water to the house... ;)

However, in touching the shutoff, SLA92 could create a leak at the packing nut of the shutoff so if he/she isn't handy with a pair of pliers they probably shouldn't touch anything.

I would call the landlord and remind him/her that the hot water being wasted is not only costing you money but it is also costing them money in terms of water and sewer costs if you are on a public sewer system.

Otherwise, discuss shutting off the cold water into the heater and see what they say.

Simply put, if anything breaks they can't come back on you if you discuss things now, OK?

Back to you...

Mark

There is usually a shut off valve on the cold water input side of the heater. The valve is often located about a foot above the tank on the cold water side and assuming it is a regular valve, would turn right to close. It may be hard to turn and require a wrench. Be careful and don't break off the handle.

So I've decided not to try shutting it off, it doesn't sound like a great idea since I have NO idea what I'm doing. BUT can I just turn down the temperature on the tank? If the water doesn't need as warmed up it won't use as much gas, right? It sounds pretty logical :P Oh and I would love to kick my landlord in the *** but he only goes one speed and that's slooowww.. Thanks for the help :)

By shutting it down you will only need to heat the water back up to temperature when it is needed, so I see no real gain here.

If I was you I would watch my gas bill and see if there is any major change in your gas bill between the time this issue started and the time it is fixed. Give time for the gas bills to arrive and then check them out... if there is a large difference in the bills compared to the averages over the months this wasn't an issue you may be able to show that to the landlord and ask NICELY for reimbursement.

He may or may not pay and may or may not appreciate that, by the way. Remember, if you make too big a deal he could raise your rent, so you may want to "tread lightly" here, especially if your rent is reasonable.

Unfortunately, as they say sometimes, you need to pick your battles carefully. The question here is whether this is important enough to piss this guy off, huh?

You would know better than me.

I am sorry that he won't take this seriously as it shouldn't be costing you anything, but in the end, at least you have hot water!

Good luck!

Mark

The question here is whether this is important enough to piss this guy off, huh?

And the question for me is why this thread has so many poosts when it's the landlords responsibility for upkeep and repair, What else can we do? Regards, Tom

Massplumber - Shut off valves to hot water units in mobile homes do NOT exist, never had. OP did not say if he lived in apt, home or mobile home. Sorry. There is only a whole house shut off in mobile homes unless the customer paid for any shut off valve to be added when the home was built at the factory. Certain plumbing codes do not apply to manufactured homes they only go by Federal codes.

The Twink's correct. In my area there were many mobile home factories and when construction slowed down in the 70's I worked as a plumber in them installing plumbing.
We didn't install angle stops on fixtures or an shut off on the heater which were 17 gallon one element units.
However, Mark was referring to single family homes, condos and ccommercial buildings. Mobile homes never entered the discussion. So I guess everybody wins. Peace, Tom