Bypass the bypass

Last night I was doing plumbing all night in my sleep. This morning as soon as it warmed up a bit I tackled the leaky bypass valve. As you can see in this photo

I cut the input and output to the valve and connected them together, bypassing the valve. To my surprise my fix didn’t leak. I hate plumbing jobs. They always seem to leak. I had to lie there on my back shinning my flashlight into the access hole looking for the leak because I couldn’t believe it. After I was convinced there was no leak, I got out my shop vac and dried everything out. I waited and no more drips so I cleaned up and put everything away. After patting myself on the back and a few hours later I went around to verify no more drips. DAMN! WATER! It dripped in three places. Fine, I thought, I fixed one leak and created more. After cleaning up the water and checking everything I found the problem. The bypass valve has one input and two outputs, so you can divert the water either to the hot water tank or the cold water side. I didn’t do anything with the cold water side because the valve is set to the hot water tank side. The cold water side should be turned off. Seems it leaks through the valve and out the open tubes I cut, so now I need to decide what to do about that.