As I set down to work on this article, I have just returned from the “end of the world” and the “bottom of the world.” My wife and I visited South America and Antarctica. The southern tip of Argentina, at the terminus point of the Pan-American Highway, is in the Puerto Madryn National Park. And after visiting the “end of the world,” it only seemed logical that we continued on to the area of the South Pole, Antarctica, or the “bottom of the world.” It was a trip of a lifetime, allowing me to observe the differing styles of plumbing found in those parts of the world. I’ll save those observations for another time, while I get into my topic for this article, “Identifying back-feed potentials within domestic hot water risers.”
Much of this article is pulled from an article on “Commissioning” by Miles Ryan, PE, in which he discussed the typical issues found in high-rise residential buildings. While, in my view “residential” is a misnomer, since we are discussing a high-rise structure. Regardless of what is contained within the high-rise structure: offices, retail, hotel spaces or individual residential units, the mechanical systems that support their operations are basically the same. And for the purpose of this article, we shall restrict ourselves to the domestic hot water and associated return systems.