I have a pretty good hot water heater, but I find that it sometimes runs out of hot water towards the end of my shower.
What is the best way to get the longest length of hot water?
Now, I turn the hot water all the way on and mix a bit of cold water in. Is there a better way to adjust it? Is there a way to turn the hot water on less and make it last longer?
I installed a modern water-conserving shower head and now I never run out of hot water. It took me a little while to get used to the lack of wetness normally associated with water, but it’s an adjustable head and if I mix it between the hard jet setting and the gentle shower setting, it works ok.
If you already have one of those, turning the hot on all the way is not doing much since the shower head maxes out at about 1/4 of the way on.
If that’s the case, your water heater needs to be turned up…just a hair, a few degrees at the most, so you’ll use less hot and more cold and the water in the tank will last a few minutes longer.
you could take a bath?
How big is your water heater and how long is your shower? What temperature is your water heater set at? The answers to these questions will help to determine if your water heater has a problem that limits its recovery time, or if you just take way too much time in the shower. IME, one shower shouldn’t drain a water heater.
With independent controls for hot and cold like you have, you’ll get the longest shower by turning the water heater to the hottest setting and using the lowest flow from the shower. Since you can regulate hot and cold individually, you’ll want the lowest flow from the hot valve mixed with whatever amount of cold makes it the right temperature for comfort.
You might consider turning up the heater before you shower and turning it back down when you are done if you are the only one showering. I’m assuming it’s a storage tank heater and not an inline…
If you have a penchant for endless showers a tankless,on demand,point of use heater would fill the need.
Models are available with regulated temperature output so mixer fiddling is unnecessary for the most part.
Installation of same may require upgrade to your electric service.
Taking a bath requires more water than a shower, at least for me. I think you would have to take a really long shower for it to approach an entire bathtub full of water. However, with a bath you could always supplement the water heater by boiling a couple of pots of water on the stove first.
How old is the heater? Maybe the dip tube has corroded beyond its useful life. Check and see if you have user-serviceable anodes, and if they’re pretty gone, maybe your dip tube is, too.
That would seem intuitive, but I’ve actually found that if I turn on the shower but plug the drain, and shower til the bath is full enough to bathe, I don’t run out of hot water. When I’m done bathing, I’ll turn on the shower again to wash off.
Seconded - I’ve got one, and I’ll never go back. Much cheaper to operate, no wasted fuel, and endless hot water. What’s not to love?
They do not all require electricity though. Mine just uses LP, and I ran it off of a 20lb tank for a year before I got a big LP tank installed. I live on the side of a mountain in New England and have frequent, and sometimes prolonged power outages in the winter, so I wouldn’t buy one that needed power.