Showering with 10 gallon water heater

[rblake39]

We are buying a fifth wheel to full time in. My GF just asked me to time her shower at our house to see how long it took her. 8 minutes. She's concerned she wont get a fully hot shower in the RV for a full 8 minutes. Is 10 gallons enough? I noticed she really doesn't care if I have enough hot water after her though...lol. I just explained to her she may have to turn it off then lather up, then wet her hair and turn it off etc.

[4X4Dodger]

amandasgramma wrote:
Get a shower head that has a 'turn off" valve. I get in, wet myself down, click that button (water is off at the nozzle, not the valves) and soap up, then turn water on and rinse off. Two of us take showers in tandem, have never run out of water. I've even gone in to do dishes almost immediately after showering. 🙂 🙂

His girlfriend sounds way too high-maintenance for that kind of shower.

🙂

[dougford]

Tell the GF the ONLY way it's going to work is if you shower together...

[ramgunner]

tropical_ron wrote:
We leave our 10 gallon water heater on electric constantly. Before taking a shower we turn on propane in addition to a/c power. You can take as long a shower as you wish; we have never run out of hot water. We wait for propane, which heats faster, to shutdown before the next person showers. This has worked for us for a number of years in two different motorhomes with 10 gallon water heaters.

Agreed.

[Veebyes]

DallasSteve wrote:

Lynnmor wrote:
If the girlfriend wastes that much water, you can't afford her.

It just depends how cute she is. If she's really cute she can waste all the water she wants, as long as I can watch. I'll keep putting dollars in the machine.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding..... We have a winner!

[kennethwooster]

I agree with running electric and propane at same time during showers. This will also allow 2nd individual to also have a hot shower. Might need to give it 10-15 minutes after 1st shower.

[DallasSteve]

Lynnmor wrote:
If the girlfriend wastes that much water, you can't afford her.

It just depends how cute she is. If she's really cute she can waste all the water she wants, as long as I can watch. I'll keep putting dollars in the machine.

[RV-1_2n-FUN]

Atwood has a new 18 gallon quick recovery water heater.

longer time showers

[DAWg134]

I seriously doubt that the water flow rate is all that high with the shower, especially considering the lower pressure and smaller diameter pipes typically found in most RVs. I would guess that the shower output is less than 1/2 gallon per minute, and probably less than 50% of that mix is hot water.

The only way to know for sure is to grab a 1-gallon or even a 5-gallon bucket and then time how long it takes to fill it.

I did this recently at home as an experiment using my garden hose after I became skeptical regarding California's Water Conservation propaganda (e.g., "... a faucet that drips just one drip per minute wastes over 100 gallons per day." Wrong... it's more like 34 gallons per YEAR. Or, "... washing your car at home uses over 175 gallons, whereas washing it at a commercial carwash will use only 45 gallons due to recycling." Well, with the faucet full-on it took 1 minute and 43 seconds to fill a 5-gallon bucket using a 50-foot 5/8" diameter hose at 70 psi water pressure through 1/2" copper pipe plumbing.)

At approximately 3 gallons per minute, I would have needed to run the water continuously at full blast for nearly an hour to use the 175 gallons they claimed. Instead, I sprayed the car for about 30 seconds, used about a gallon of soapy water to wash with, then rinsed it off for a minute or so... less than 5 gallons. Granted, it's a small car, but still....

[Ron3rd]

rblake39 wrote:
We are buying a fifth wheel to full time in. My GF just asked me to time her shower at our house to see how long it took her. 8 minutes. She's concerned she wont get a fully hot shower in the RV for a full 8 minutes. Is 10 gallons enough? I noticed she really doesn't care if I have enough hot water after her though...lol. I just explained to her she may have to turn it off then lather up, then wet her hair and turn it off etc.

The wife and I have a 6 gal heater and it works fine. 6 gals is plenty if you know what you're doing and they recover pretty fast.

[stickdog]

We have a 6 gal WH and DW showers first and by the time she has fooled with her hair about ten minutes there's plenty of hot for me and that's on full hookups where water usage is not an issue.

[ependydad]

Ok, I read all of the posts and see that Navy showers are strongly recommended but that doesn't quite answer the question. In a RV with a 10 gallon hot water tank, your girlfriend likely won't need to change anything. I like a long hot shower. I dwaddle, have long hair, and like to relax. Not only have I never run out, but I'll also often shower my 3 year old during/after my shower and only make the water slightly less hot.

As others have mentioned, your gray water tank may need emptied more often depending on if you're able to leave your tank open or not (i.e. on a full hookup site).

btw, don't know if it matters- but my family are fulltimers.

[jnharley]

My spouse thinks I am crazy using all hot water. What can I say. I like a hot shower.

[K3WE]

wannavolunteerFT wrote:
I want to say it is not absolutely necessary to take a NAVY shower. I have a 6 gallon WH and have the oxygenics shower head. I turn propane on just before I get in shower (electric was already on). I leave the water running while I shower and manage to not run out of hot water. Over the holidays, I only had cool water one day (temps were much lower that morning). I do usually adjust to cooler as I prefer a cooler final rinse. As far as wasting water, I don't think I used too much. I have a 32 gal grey tank and it finally filled on the fourth morning. Probably had a gallon or two of water standing in the tub as I finished. So maybe 8 gallons a shower. I did no cooking and only bedtime and morning hand and face washing, as I stayed in house during the day (or was away from house and TT).

DITTOS! GREAT POST AND I WAS WORRIED NO ONE WOULD SAY THIS!

I will run the tank (7 gal in our case) out of hot water if I'm LONG or LAZY. But to leave the water running and do the normal get wet, soap up, shave the face, wash the face, wash the hair, rinse works fine without the water cooling off. No need for a "Navy Shower".

We do not have a super-duper oxygenics shower head, but conversely, most RV showerheads are more conservative than those in a "stick house".

You do need maybe 10 min of recovery time for multiple folks, but with full hook ups, the shower does a very nice job- and I'd think a 10-gallon tank would allow a few more minutes of relaxing!

When 'boondocking for multiple days', yeah, THEN it's Navy-Shower time because of the total quantity of fresh water, etc.

[hotpepperkid]

We have a 6 gal water heater and both of us can take a shower and still have hot left. 8 min is a long time one should easily to have to take a shower in 5 min