Taking water TOO long to get hot.

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Nathan Alston

Nathan Alston

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Hello everyone. My name is Nathan, and I hope that someone might know how I can overcome our situation. A few months back, we had a plumber come by to install a new water heater, as a replacement for a defective one which had been out of service for a few years (We just hadn't had the financial means by which to have had it replaced before then). This water heater services the upper level of our home, and the spigot for the hot water takes at LEAST two full minutes for the water to turn hot. Now, it had mentioned that there's a longer pipe run, to the upstairs, and that THAT might be the causative factor. However, I DO remember when the old heater was working, up there, and its water turned hot just as quickly as our water heater, for downstairs, did.

I HOPE someone could help with this.

Advanced thanks,

Nathan
 
Is there a recirculation system installed?
 
The time it takes hot water to reach a fixture is mostly dependent on the length of the piping between the water heater and the fixture and the flow rate of the water. Assuming you are talking about a shower with a flow rate of 2.5 GPM and a time of 2 minutes to get hot water, 5 gallons of "cold" water will be flowing out of the shower head. If you have 3/4" copper pipe, that means your supply pipe is 220 feet long which is awfully long. And if the piping is 1/2", which it very well may be, it would have to be almost 500 feet long which is pretty much unbelievable.

Now if you are talking about a sink with a flow rate of like 1 GPM, a 3/4" supply pipe would need to be about 90 feet long for it to take 2 minutes to get hot water to the fixture, and 200 feet long for a 1/2" pipe.

So, with that understanding, I'm thinking you either are exaggerating about the "at LEAST two full minutes for the water to turn hot", or you are looking at the time it takes for the sink to get hot and your flow rate through your faucet is more like 0.5 GPM or less.

Bottom line, the only way to decrease the time it takes for hot water to reach a fixture is to keep hot water closer to the fixture, like a circulating system and have all the pipes insulated.
 
I know absolutely nothing about any circulating/re-circulating system being married to our water heater. After something that I JUST tried, I must make a correction in something that I had previously said. I MUST have been faster - with my mental counting of the passing seconds, before, and I apologize for that. Just now, after getting home, I engaged a stop-watch for the purpose of gathering the ACCURATE time that it took for the sink's water to change temperature. It took 55 seconds for the water to even START getting just warm.
 
The hot water supply line to each fixture is obviously full of water that is not hot after cooling off and sitting for several hours of nonuse. So, all that cooler water needs to be flushed out before you get hot water from the water heater. If you want hot water faster, the only way to do that is to get hot water in that line before you want to use it. That can be done by installing a circulating pump to pump hot water into that line returning the colder water back to the water heater.

The best system involves a separate return line like below. Installing a dedicated return line can be very difficult in an existing house. The pump can operate 24-7, on a timer during expected hot water usage, or by on-off switch(es). My system is controlled by a couple of switches and a timer. When I'm going to take a shower, I hit the switch, and the pump runs for 2 minutes. During that time, I'm brushing my teeth or doing other business in the bathroom. When it's time for the shower I have hot water.

1720267280631.png

Another system involves a "crossover valve". The crossover valve is a temperature-controlled valve that allows the cooler water coming from the circulating pump to flow into the existing cold-water line. This system doesn't provide "instant" hot water, but warm water based on the crossover valve setting. And with this type of system, the cold-water line will also be filled with warm water. The crossover valve closes fully when actual hot water reaches it, and when the warm water in the cold-water line is purged, you will have cold water again. The crossover valve is installed at the furthest fixture from the water heater which, depending on the piping layout, provides "instant" warm water at all fixtures.

1720267620007.png

I hope this explains your situation and provides you possible remedies.
 
The old heater may not have had heat traps and the piping arrangement could’ve been conducive with a self circulating thermosiphon system.

The new water heater could and probably does have heat traps and the piping could’ve been altered.

This is just a guess and based off what I’ve read it could be a possibility.

To test my theory you would need to remove any heat traps or loops in water piping.
 
You may want to look at a Grundfos Recirc System, which is sold at your local big box hardware stores. They cost about $280, and is an easy DIY with a few hand tools and an hour of your time. It has a timer to actively push water to the longest run faucet during specified times. I get hot water in less than 5 seconds from a shower, which is about 100' away from the water heater.

1720707775871.jpeg
 
havasu said:
You may want to look at a Grundfos Recirc System, which is sold at your local big box hardware stores. They cost about $280, and is an easy DIY with a few hand tools and an hour of your time. It has a timer to actively push water to the longest run faucet during specified times. I get hot water in less than 5 seconds from a shower, which is about 100' away from the water heater.

View attachment 45910
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I do a lot of handyman work in a senior 55+ community here. Most of the homeowners are well above 55...every home came with this.

There are many that love this. Equally as many have them taken out or disabled because they don't want to pay for the extra hot water they may not use. Living on the proverbial fixed income...
 
I understand there are always dilemmas. In So Cal, people are more concerned with water usage and waste, because not only does your water rates climb, your sewer rates are directly linked to your water usage, which causes your sewer rates to climb. So when you combine water and sewer rate increases, the cost of gas to heat the water is quite a bit less than water and sewer charges.
 
And with well insulated water lines and a demand based circulating system rather than a 24/7 circulating system, any "additional" hot water used can be brought down to negligible values. In St. Louis County, the sewer charges are also based on water usage.
 
sarg said:
To each his own ........ waiting a minute for the warm water to "arrive" isn't gonna change supper.
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Waiting on hot water twice a day for 1 minute each time over a year wastes over 12 hrs of your life a year waiting on hot water.
It still might not matter to you but it does to some people.

Double that if you have a spouse that waits. Everyone that uses the house has to wait.
 
With the pump system mentioned it can be set to come on and off at a certain time in the morning and evening. It doesn't
have to run 24-7.
 
Twowaxhack said:
Waiting on hot water twice a day for 1 minute each time over a year wastes over 12 hrs of your life a year waiting on hot water.
It still might not matter to you but it does to some people.

Double that if you have a spouse that waits. Everyone that uses the house has to wait.
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Another advantage to being at the end of the rainbow is that I no longer look for ways to save one minute ......... I spend more time than that pulling the hair out of my ears.
 
sarg said:
Another advantage to being at the end of the rainbow is that I no longer look for ways to save one minute ......... I spend more time than that pulling the hair out of my ears.
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That makes zero sense to anyone but you.

Minutes make hours and hours make days and days make years.

Time is the most precious thing a person has and I don’t suggest anyone wasting it. That’s why this will be my last post on this common sense subject.

Have a great rest of your weekend.
 
Well, I cannot explain what changed, but if waiting for the shower is the issue, and it is a shower/tub combination, then run the water into the tub through the spout rather than from the shower head. Generally the flow rate out of the tub spout is much higher than from the shower head, even more so if the shower head has a flow restrictor, which most shower heads do these days.

Come to think of it, was the shower head replaced during the period the hot water was out? If the previous one was an old model without a flow restrictor, and the new one has one, then you would probably see the "new longer delay" that you are currently experiencing.
 
Twowaxhack said:
That makes zero sense to anyone but you.

Minutes make hours and hours make days and days make years.

Time is the most precious thing a person has and I don’t suggest anyone wasting it. That’s why this will be my last post on this common sense subject.

Have a great rest of your weekend.
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And here we all are ... spending our "precious" time looking for entertainment on these silly forums.
 
sarg said:
Another advantage to being at the end of the rainbow is that I no longer look for ways to save one minute ......... I spend more time than that pulling the hair out of my ears.
Click to expand...
Sir, also being on the far end of the rainbow, those extra minutes could actually be important....(but I don't really care either, if it's just got to be there faster, I open the tub spout, that gets it there in 5 econds) I let my wife get the hair out of my ears.. much more enjoyable.
 
This is a truly interesting topic with many diverse points. @Twowaxhack is quite right in his take on wasting time. There are others that have no problem wasting time. These are people that will wait on a line somewhere to save a few pennies on something because they always want the cheapest of everything and don’t place any value on their own time. Then there are others, who place a high-value on not wasting energy, and thus do not want to pay a penny more for gas or electricity; so they don’t want to have instant hot water if it’s going to cost more. Then there are the code makers in various states, which basically regulate what you can do with some of this stuff at least in the initial build. The insulation requirements in North Carolina for a return line for circulating hot water are ridiculous. When I was contracting to have a home built here they really discourage me from adding a return line for the hot water because of this…

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I do a lot of handyman work and a lot of my clients are in a senior, 55+ community. Every one of those homes has one of those circulating pumps on the water heater, so everyone can have circulating hot water. There are equal numbers of people who want it disconnected because they don’t want to pay a penny more in utility costs… and others who absolutely love it. Maybe it has to do with their Social Security check is every month? Or how frugal they are by nature, regardless of their financial position.
 
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