How many minutes of hot water should you be able to get out of a decent hot water heater?
How many minutes of hot water should you be able to get out of a decent hot water heater? I’m paying TOP DOLLAR in a ‘luxury apartment building’ and I know that my unit has a dedicated water heater. Yet, after literally 18-20 minutes MAX in the shower, the water is cold. It then takes several hours before another hot shower can be taken.
Is this atypical or does this sound right?
August 28, 2011 @ 10:23 am
you should be getting more time out of it than that. ours goes for 45 minutes at least., but it probably depends on how many gallons it is too.
August 28, 2011 @ 10:48 am
From the sounds of it you have a hot water assist servicing your apartment. When I was living in a hi-rise I found that if I showered during normal hours early AM and later PM the hot water was scarce see if there is a difference at an odd hour during the weekend.
Additionally, if you are indeed the owner of a heat assist the contraption will be in your apartment and if you locate it you may be able to tinker with the controls shhhhhhh I didn’t say that.
Most likely though it’s in a super secret place and used to assist more then one apartment. You would need to schmooze the super.
Your building probably considers 20 minutes plenty of time…fools. Showering with a friend can take….longer.
I looked up the average length of a shower and found this tidbit
“Most Americans shower everyday, for 10 minutes or less, and spend 35 minutes of time in the bathroom, on average. These are some of the not-so-surprising findings on people’s ablutions derived from the 1999 Bathroom Habits Survey, American Standards poll of more than 800 U.S. residents.”
August 28, 2011 @ 11:29 am
Here are a few ideas.
Water heater is to small. that’s normal for an apt.
Ask maintenance to check the water heater, make sure everything is working.
Ask if the temperature of the water can be increased, safely.
Install your own low flow shower head, the new ones still feel the same.
August 28, 2011 @ 12:10 pm
These days, any decent domestic water heating system should be able to deliver as much hot water as is needed for as long as it is needed at any one point in your apartment. If you are in a truly luxury building, you should be able to extend that to two points.
Examples: At our summer house, we have a Bosch tankless heater that can make as much hot water as we need at either the shower, washer, kitchen or bathroom sinks. It will also run a bath at full temperature at full flow. But only one point at a time for full flow.
At our house we have a high-recovery, low-volume domestic hot water tank attached to our main boiler capable of modulating from a trickle to 12gpm/60F degree rise. We can run up to three simultaneous showers for as long as needed, yet have almost nothing in storage losses.
It seems as if you have a standard-design tank-type heater either electric or natural gas – with that long a recovery probably electric. The nature of those beasts is that when they run out, they run out – their recovery is far slower than the rate-of-use. Things you can do: Install restricted-flow shower-heads. They are not as bad as you think, some of the very good ones function so well as you would not realize the flow has been reduced. You can make sure that if you have an electric heater that it is functioning properly – if a two-element heater, both elements are operating. Or, you can take shorter showers.
August 28, 2011 @ 12:59 pm
A standard “water saver” shower head uses 2-1/2 gallons per minute. If you mix the shower water equally, that would be 1-1/4 gallons per minute of hot water (even though this is a low figure). A 20 minute shower would use 25 gallons of hot water. You also need to figure in the new cold water filling the tank as you use the hot water. This is cooling off the water in the tank. If you have a 40 gallon tank, you would be doing well to get a 20 minute shower without adjusting the water temperature in the shower every 5 minutes.
August 28, 2011 @ 1:09 pm
some one removed the flow restrictor out of the shower head…..there fore it is allowing way to much water out of the head and the heater cant keep up….replace the shower head….less pressure but longer hot showers
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