Been looking through here to find the same problem I have but don't see it. I have a gas water heater. So here goes.
When I get up in the morning and there has been no use of hot water through the night,my shower is hot but not as hot as it should be. The next person to shower later gets plenty of hot water. How do I get the heater to cycle during the night to keep the temp up
How far is the water heater from the shower? Overnight, the standing water in the lines will cool off. especially if the shower supply lines run through an outside wall. The water heater cycles only when the water in the tank cools off, not when the water in the pipes cool off. In my 2 story, 2000 ft house, the master bathroom is almost the entire length of the house from the water heater that is also two floors down in the basement. When taking a shower in the morning, it takes a long time for the hot water to replace the standing water in the pipes and reach the shower. I usually turn on the hot water sink faucet and the shower set all the way to hot at the same time to get the hot water up to the shower faster. Then turn off the sink and adjust the shower temperature.
try turning the tank temperature up just a little. the water is cooling off a little overnite but not enough to turn the burner on again
Unless there is a timer of some kind on the water heater, this scenario makes no sense. Every conventional water heater I have ever seen has water that's hottest at the start and it goes down hill from there.
" snipped-for-privacy@aol.com" wrote in news:1142181946.931652.175440 @j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
I've tried this but it didn't seem to help
willshak wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.supernews.com:
I have about the same set up but the water goes cooler rather than hotter the longer it runs.
I assume you mean the water gets colder as you run more water. The heater simply isn't keeping up with the cold water coming in.
How old is the heater?
I have noticed similar problems with water heaters as they age. They seem to develop a wider range between when the burner turns on and off.
For example a new heater set to 140 may turn off at 140 and turn back on at 130. As it gets older it may not turn back on until it gets to 110.
For something like that you may be getting 110 degree water in the morning. The heater turns on but can't keep up with what you are drawing out.
No adjustment available that I know of. Replacement of the control unit most likely would not be worth it.
Thanks Rich that sounds like it. The heater is about 8 years old not very old if you ask me. It's not bad on weekends because I get up and do stuff around the house using hot water so when I use the shower later there's pleny. But during the week I hit the shower right away. Oh well at least it isn't cold water :)
How can that be it when you said that there is only insufficient hot water for the first person to shower and that when the second person uses it, it's OK? If the water heater is not heating to full capacity, for whatever reason, be it age, malfunction, etc, there would be LESS water for the second person to shower, not more.
I shower at 6:15 am The second person (my wife) doesn't get up and shower until 8:00 am. The heater fires up to heat after my shower. The water for her shower an hour and a half later is hot.
Because overnight the water temperature has cooled to where he must use it with mostly hot water turned on. The tank can't recover that fast enough to heat the water for the next person. If the tank has completed heating it is very hot and a smaller amount of hot water is mixed with cold for the shower.
Another item is that around here the cold water is much colder during the winter months. If true with him it just aggravates the problem causing the warm water in the tank to cool even faster and taking longer to heat up again.
What would be good is if by some method he could get the tank heater to cycle on an hour or so before they were going to use it. Turning the thermostat up to where the burner comes on and then back to the desired temperature would do it.
Getting up an hour earlier to go down 2 floors goose the water heater and then go back up to bed ain't worth it LOL! I'll deal with the tepid water. :)
OK, then the only possibility left that I can see is that you have a bad thermostat/gas control valve assembly. It sounds like the thermostat has too wide of a range between the off and on temp. So, overnight, it can cool off to somewhere just above the low limit at which it would fire up. When you draw some water, it pushes it below the limit, and now it won't shut off till it gets to the high limit, so when the shower is used an hour an a half later, its hot.
Someone previously had suggested this and deserves credit. But they also suggested turning it up, which should make it better, though it's really not the right fix. The fact that it doesn't should be cause for concern too, since something isn't right. And if the thermostat/gas control valve isn't behaving right, I would be concerned about what it might do next.
I think you can get the whole assembly for about $80, or it may be under warranty if its less than 10 yrs old.
Well I'm kind of a klutz when it comes to plumbing ( I could tell a story where I change a shower head and have to replace a toilet) so I'm about due to have our AC serviced for spring I'll have the guy check it out Thanks!
Hehehe! If you tell us YOUR story, I'll follow-up with mine about using a cold chisel to remove rusted toilet seat bolts! Wow!
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