I like hot showers. I mean, really hot, where the skin on my belly is pink-red when I get out. Two degrees before blisters hot.
If I don’t get my hot shower, my hands and feet turn blue. For real, my body feels the lukewarm water, freaks out, and shuts off blood flow to the extremities. I know that’s not a normal physiological response, but what can I say, my body is really quick on the draw for that hypothermia stuff. Good thing I’m not a caveman, I never woulda survived to adulthood.
So, last winter, I discovered that my hot water heater wasn’t cutting it. With the heat level set to ‘A’ (what does that even MEAN? The available settings are 1, 2, 3, A, B and C) I did not get my hot morning shower. I dreaded getting out of bed into my cold house (the husband likes to keep it at 66) just so I could jump into a shivery blue-handed shower.
So I cranked the temperature up on the water heater, to ‘B’. There’s a huge warning on the heater about how setting your hot water temp to more than 125 degrees could result in FIERY, BURNY DEATH for the hapless soul who turn on STRAIGHT hot water and JUMPS IN without testing it first, with, say, an expendable pinky toe. I vaguely wondered how hot ‘B’ was, in fahrenheit degrees, but figured it didn’t matter too much since only adults and non-opposoble-thumbed animals live in my house.
That increased the temp slightly, but my hands were still blue-ish. I came to discover that some mornings I had hot showers, while other mornings I had mostly warmish showers – and eventually correlated it with my dishwasher-running schedule. If the dishwasher had run the night before, I got a toasty nice shower, and all was well with the world. If not, it was blue hands for me. Through some trial and error, I discovered that my hottest showers happened when the dishwasher ran at 3 am. Addicted to hot showers, I would even schedule a 10-minute quick rinse cycle on no dishes days.
It would seem, though, that my last-winter’s water extravagance caused a drought in Loudoun County over the summer. So this winter I’ve decided to not be a water waster – and instead the husband and I have turned the hot water heater up to the last notch of ‘C.’
I had a few nice mornings, with wonderfully hot showers, but this afternoon I discovered my basement full of water. After using all 10 of our towels to mop up half the mess, the husband consulted our how-to plumbing guide – to discover that water leaking from the pressure valve can mean that you have the temperature set too high.
So that’s it for my hot showers, at least until I can get someone to come out and look at my tank. If nothing can be repaired or adjusted, it may just be time to replace it.
7 replies on “hot water heater misery”
ever try logging out of WOW, doing dishes by hand and having a hot shower?
hmmm, not sure if that would really get me a hot shower – unless by “doing dishes by hand” you mean “doing dishes by hand and then running an empty dishwasher” or “doing dishes by hand at 3 am and then running a hot water heater’s tank worth of hot water down the sink” …
dude, what is your water bill like? if I take even a couple of extra baths a month (aside from my daily shower…the i-had-a-bad-day-and-i-need-to-relax kind), I can totally tell a difference in my bill. why does running the dishwasher get you a hot shower? i am under the impression the thermostat on your water heater should kick on and off like your central heating. and when you run your tank out of water, the tank just refills with cold water, taking that much longer and that much more energy to reheat. i did some research, because i was trying to figure out this little phenomenon you were describing–it doesn’t seem that emptying out your tank should help in any way. howstuffworks.com says:
A water heater uses nothing more than the “heat rises” principle to separate hot water from cold water in the tank. As cold water comes in, it remains at the bottom of the tank because it is denser than hot water. If you use the hot water faster than the heating elements can heat the incoming cold water, and if you consume all of the hot water that the tank holds, you run out of hot water in the middle of your shower. If this seems to happen too often, it could mean that the bottom heating element in an electric water heater has burned out or that your water heater is too small for your house. Or it could mean that you are taking really, really long showers.
Hmmm, if that’s the case, perhaps something is out of whack and just needs to be replaced – because running the dishwasher or doing hot/warm loads of laundry means I get a hot shower an hour or two later. And I don’t take ridiculously long showers – just moderately wasteful 15 minute ones. 🙂
To answer your other question, I don’t pay much attention to the water bill … it’s a quarterly bill that’s less than the monthly fios (tv, internet, phone) bill, that I just write the check and remember how grateful I am to live in the day and age of indoor plumbing …
the comment about the long showers wasn’t from me, that was howstuffworks.com…just so you don’t think i was accusing you of anything.
the whales would appreciate you looking into that issue with your hot water tank, though 😛
One more thought-water tanks are built with a filler tube that takes the cold water to the bottom to insure the water coming out of the top stays its hottest-the bottom element comes on to heat the incoming water. the top element is to keep thet top hot when there is no flow or the bottom element is not on. Most tanks won’t let both on at the same time. If the filler tube is damaged the water will mix higher in the tank and not heat before exiting. AS DIY element replacement is $15 or so. The tube is prolly less than $5. a tank much older than 10yrs should prolly retire.
That’s good to know, hopefully that’s the problem! I *think* the hot water heater was replaced by the previous owners, but I can’t remember. If it was, it’s only a few years old. If not, it’d be 16 like the rest of the house …