When my hot water tank quit on me and no water was flowing when I turned on my hot water tap, I tried reigniting the pilot light. The hot water pipe connected to the hot water tank was hot but still no hot water in the taps. I could see the pilot light lit on and the flames burning inside the hot water tank through a small clear glass window near bottom of hot water tank. The flames stopped after a few minutes and the pilot light stayed on but still no hot water in the taps.
I tried fiddling with the hot and warm knob settings but cannot figure out why only cold water tap works but when I turned to hot water side, no water at all. I can understand if only cold water runs when I turn tap to hot water side. I believed there could be something stuck in the hot water pipes that is causing a blockage of some kind. The chimney on top of the hot water tank has no obstruction of any kind to cause the problem. At times I noticed that the pilot light would go off and I needed to relit the pilot light. However I do not think pilot light has anything to do with no water running when I turned on to hot water side tap.
Running out of my wit, I decided to call in the repairman for hot water tank. Luckily I was renting the hot water tank from Reliance home comfort and gave them a call. They didn't have anyone to come right away as it was 8pm at night but they said they would send someone early next morning. I tried to reason with them to send someone right away but it seemed they didn't have enough people working for them during the night. So I decided to try out other things as mentioned earlier. None of those tactics worked for me and I had to take to my relatives close by to shower at their place.
Next morning when the repair guy came and did a check on the hot water tank, he realized that the long tube extending from cold water pipe into the hot water tank was bad. He firmly banged on the cold copper water pipe and he asked me to try turning on the hot water tap. The hot water started flowing well. But this was a temporary solution and he needed to do a more permanent fix he said. He told me if next time this happens again, at least this temporary hack could get you enough hot water for the day until the repairman comes next morning.
The permanent fix was to replace the long tube that extend from cold water pipe into the hot water tank. Once the long tube was replaced, hot water tank was working perfectly fine. We started getting really good flow of hot water when tap is turned towards hot water side.
