Why does my bath tub drip only when the hot water is shut off?

August 25, 2021 11:40 AM

My apartment complex has hot water that comes from a boiler. My building is is about 2 sections away from said boiler. My complex management is also not very forthcoming about water being shut off for whatever reason, but I've noticed that the bath tub starts to drip for about 15 minutes after they've cut off the hot water for a fix somewhere. None of the other faucets do this. The tub faucet is pretty new, maybe 3 years old. Is there an explanation?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a to Home & Garden (2 answers total)

Wild guess here. When the water pressure helps seal the faucet shut. Once the pressure eases the seal releases and the faucet starts to drip.
posted by tman99 at 11:58 AM on August 25, 2021

Best answer: do you have a showerhead in that tub? the pipe that supplies our showerhead is like, an offshoot of the pipe that supplies our faucet, and pressure seems to hold water up in that vertical pipe, and then if you shut it off, it drains out into our faucet. Ours just kind of releases that pressure randomly as well as if you shut the water of, so sometimes our tap will just start dripping for like 10 minutes in the middle of the night.
posted by euphoria066 at 12:16 PM on August 25, 2021 [2 favorites]