Your problem is not with your water heater size.

Assume for a moment that you have a shower head rated at 2.5 GPM and you
were using only hot water.

You would get 20 solid minutes of hot water assuming that there wasn't any
recovery during the shower.

That would give you almost 3 7 minute showers.

If you add in a little cold water to get the temperature right, have some
recovery, and have a little lag time between the showers the last person in
should not run out of hot water.

You could have several common problems. First you may have a half a tank of
sediment. Especially in areas of hard water you need to flush out the
sediment once a year.

Another problem might be a burned out heater element, or both of the above.


--
Roger Shoaf
If you are not part of the solution, you are not dissolved in the solvent.

"AlaJoe" wrote in message
...
I have a 50 Gallon electric water heater that is just not getting the
job done. One person can shower as long as he wants but the recovery time
is
just too long between users and My wife, My kid and ,myself are trying to
take showers within one hour and it just will not keep up. So I am looking
to either add an additional water heater and split off one bathroom or
increase the size of the one. My question is about energy usage.
I have looked at 30-80 gallon heaters and there does not appear to be
much difference in energy usage. The 30 Gallons heater have an annual
energy
estimate of about $405 to $410 and 80 gallon heaters about $440 to $450.
Does this mean if I add a 30 gallon water heater in addition to the 50
gallon I already have to seperate one bathroom I will spend about $820 to
$850 a year to keep 80 gallons of water heated to where I could buy just
one
80 gallon and only spend about $450?
Would one 80 gallon allow three people to take back to back showers?
Which set up would work best?

Joe