Water heater temperature
Too hot outside, so time on my hands to mull things over. I find RV shower to be a pain. Trying to get the temperature right, wasting water on a limited supply, the dripping of the RV type showe...
Forum Discussion
Fulltimer50 wrote:
In the normal water heater configuration, the hot water from the heater is mixed with cold water from somewhere else. If all of the water comes from the heater, you are going to run out of warm water faster than if you mixed it.
This is the real problem with lowering the hot water heater temp.
Mix 130f water with 60F cold water, to get 100F water at the shower head. With a 6gal water tank, you can probably keep that up for around 8-10gal before so much cold water has been mixed into the hot water tank, that the hot water tank is putting out water below 100F.
If you start with 100F hot water tank, as soon as you start pulling water, the hot water tank starts dropping below 100F quickly getting progressively colder since it's pulling 60F water from the fresh tank to replace the "hot" water used. If there is only 1 of you and you do a 2gal navy shower, that may be acceptable as it will probably only be down in the upper-80's by the time you are done.
If you have room, you could install a separate 5gal tank (or pick the size you think is suitable for showering) with it's own fresh water pump. Fill the reservoir, with a mix of hot and cold water of the desired amount and temperature. Then using the secondary pump plumbed to the shower, you can take a shower off the reservoir tank with a constant temp...at least until it runs out.
Seems like more hassle than it's worth but it should work.
