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#1
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Poor hot water heater performance
I have a 40 gallon "high efficiency" gas hot water heater that's about 4-5 years
old at this point. EVER SINCE IT WAS INSTALLED I have felt that the amount of hot water available was much less than expected. For example, when taking a shower using one of the current crop of shower valves (that have the REALLY small pipes inside the fitting), and a low-flow shower head within 3-4 MINUTES its necessary to start turning the termperature to hotter in order to maintain the same termperature. The problem is so bad that we've been running the water heater on the full hot setting (temperature knob turned ALL THE WAY TO HOT) because my wife likes to take hot showers. Even so, she can turn on the faucet nearest the heater and hold her hand in the hot water stream without scalding. Recently, we spent some time at my mother's house, and even though she is using a standard shower head that flows more than ours, I found NO NEED to continuously turn the temperature up while taking a shower. The water lasted the entire shower, which seems much more normal than my heater at home... I can only think of a couple reasons why our heater would have these problems: 1. I hooked the pipes up wrong and the cold water and hot are switched. NOPE. I checked and the pipes are on the holes marked correctly. 2. The dip tube? that carries the cold water to the bottom has fallen off? Possible, although when I installed the heater I checked with a flashlight and there was a tube connected to the cold water inlet that I could see going down into the heater... 3. Sediment? I open the valve and let a bunch of crud shoot out every couple months... BUT, since this heater has had this characteristic EVER SINCE IT WAS INSTALLED I suspect none of the above is the problem... SO, since I'm tired of this, and I'm REALLY tired of my wife complaining, and I figure we're wasting a lot of gas trying to heat water to the hottest temperature, I figure its time to replace this thing. And although I find some discussions in here of water heaters, I'm not finding much in the way of recommendations. There are only two of us in the house, and the water heater is a regular flue-type, natural gas. Can y'all give me any recommendations for brand/model or whatever, or are they all pretty much the same and I can go over to Menard's or Home Depot and just get a 40 gallon and be done with it... Is it worth going to a 50-gallon for just 2 people? It seems like overkill since the biggest thing we ever do is fill the tub occasionally, which it seems a properly working 40-gallon should do... OR, is there something I'm missing on this current heater that I can do to get it to work significantly better? Ideas? Thoughts? |
#2
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Poor hot water heater performance
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#3
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Poor hot water heater performance
OK, Jim, I checked the temperature at the kitchen faucet, which is about 15 feet
from the water heater. The hot water lines from the heater to the kitchen are insulated. With the water on full hot, the temperature after 60 seconds was 124.5 degrees. I ran a few gallons to make the heater come on. then I checked again an hour later when the heater should have been heating things to max. This time the temperature was 129 degrees........ No WONDER my wife can stand there with her hand in the water and not feel anything close to scalding....... OK, so I'm going to conclude that for whatever reason the heater just isn't doing a very good job of heating - whether it be the control, or heater, or burner, or thermostat, or whatever... Given that the thing is around 5 years old, I'm thinking its not worth a whole lot to try to fix controls or whatever. Especially considering that we've got a history of going through water heaters at almost exactly 5 year intervals. The plumber that put in the second-to-last one said that it shortens their life to run them on full hot all the time... So, I'm figuring it may be worth getting a high recovery unit if its not a whole lot more than a standard one... |
#4
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Poor hot water heater performance
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