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EricK

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My wife and I bought another home. I went to change the faucet in the extra bathroom and discovered this set up which I can only describe as odd. It looks like the hot and cold are connected by a quarter inch copper line. The elevation of this house is at 4,000 ft so it does snow and get really cold in the winter. I thought maybe it's something to keep the pipes from freezing? But it's only at this sink and not at the sink in the other bathroom or in the kitchen. I really have no idea what this is so I left it in place. Can anybody fill me in?
 

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It could be a recirculation line to keep the hot water hot at the end of the line .
 
As long as the facet can be individually selected, when you change the faucet, also change the angle stops, and eliminate the cross connect, which may have been for a discontinued, specialty faucet.
 
As long as the facet can be individually selected, when you change the faucet, also change the angle stops, and eliminate the cross connect, which may have been for a discontinued, specialty faucet.
I figured it might have been for some kind of specialty faucet. There are no additional holes up at the sink so maybe for something within the cabinet itself?. It doesn't get in the way of anything and it has its own shut-off valves. Just had no idea what it was for.
 
We had those same copper lines in our previous house's master bathroom sink. Aren't those just the old style lines they used to use before the flex lines became popular?
 
I have heard of mxer lines for showers to prevent temp changes when someone flushes or suddenly opens a tap somewhere else. Maybe it's to limit the hot water temp for kids.
 
How old is the house? Is the sink original? Looking more closely at the photos, here's my ignorant-wacko theory of what happened:

1. House is built in a time when sinks have separate hot & cold faucets
2. Bathroom is renovated for a single faucet but it's some weird early model that only has one line going in, so they run hot and cold together into a tee and then up into the faucet, which only ever puts out lukewarm water mixed 50/50 hot/cold in the tee. (No idea if this was ever really a thing...)
3. Bathroom gets updated one more time with a regular 1-hole faucet that has separate hot/cold lines going into it, but the old connecting hardware never got removed.
 
Good theories! Unfortunately, my pictures don't show the half inch copper line coming out of the wall for both hot and cold. Each line is Tee'd off into two different valves. One set of valves goes up to the faucet the other set of valves go to the quarter inch copper tubing in the picture. So technically, I could just close up the valves to the quarter inch copper line.

It is an older home. It's a second house my wife and I purchased. Some of the work is questionable. When I went to replace the faucet I noticed the p-trap was glued in with no way of removing it. So I had to cut it out and reinstall a new p-trap that is removable.

I think the easiest thing to do is to simply close those valves or simply leave it as is. The tubing doesn't get in the way of anything and I don't think I would have ever noticed it had I not gone underneath the sink too shut off the water lines to replace the faucet. The home inspector didn't notice it and that guy was really thorough
 

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