wrote in message
s.com...
Hi,
I have a problem with my hot water heater. It is a two year old fifty
gallon unit. When I am the first person to use water in the house and
I take a shower I will start to run out of water within about fifteen
minutes. If the next person to shower waits about an hour there is
enough hot water to shower for at least thirty minutes. There only
seems to be a problem for the first shower in the morning. I replaced
the thermostat and that didn't fix the problem. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jim

Just a guess, but I had a similar problem a long time ago ...
If the cold water connection to the water heater is not connected
to the internal pipe that runs inside the heater down toward the
bottom, then the hot water can stratify in the tank with only a
portion getting really hot - the water near the top of the tank doesn't
get heated very well. Your first shower draws hot water (incorretly)
from near the bottom of the tank but runs out fairly quickly. The next
person to take a shower probably gets more/longer hot water because
the mixing of the water in the tank from the turbulence of the first
shower and there isn't time for the hot water to stratify again.
The connection could be wrong for several reasons --
- cold water line intially not connected to the "cold" connection
- the downtube was taken out and/or moved to the "hot" connection
- the downtube was never installed or put in the wrong place by the
factory.
Not the easiest thing to check - you'll probably have to shut off the
water and remove the hot and cold connections to the water heater
and look inside.
BTW - I think that this is more likely to happen with gas hot water
heaters that mainly heat the water at the bottom of the tank as
opposed to electrics which usually have multiple elements in the tank.