Hot water woes

[freshspecbluegt]

I need help with a plumbing situation, expecting the worst, seems like everything around here is starting to eat it.

Back Story,
1500 Sq Ft. townhouse, 3Br. 2.5 Bath with detached garage. built in 1980, most fixtures replaced at some point. 60 gallon water heater in the garage.

Problem,
At most, but not all fixtures including both showers and the kitchen sink hot water takes 5+minutes to arrive and another minute or two to reach full temp. With the faucets set to full hot there is considerably less water pressure then when at full cold. Hot water gets there eventually and I can take a 20 minute shower without running out of water. Once hot water arrives, water pressure increases to normal levels.

The garage is detached so the water has to go through the backyard, however its only 12 feet from the kitchen to the water heater.

The kicker is the down stairs bathroom sink is hot nearly instantly. Same with the upstairs bathroom sinks. Don't know where to start looking, any ideas?

Thanks

Ross

 

[RavenTai]

The time to get hot water is purely a function of the length of pipe between the faucet and water heater, its diameter and the flow rate, you have to get through the cold water that is sitting in the pipe then you have to heat the pipe and what ever is arround it to get fully hot water, having the water heater in another building is a big part of the problem,

This is one of the things that is best to do when designing a home more difficult to fix later, it is best to put all the plumbing in one wall, short runs, with the water heater nearby, keeps building cost down also, the garage may be only 12' away "as the crow flies" but i'll bet the actual pipe run is much longer, who knows what route the pipes take to get there.

you could look at a circulator that will constantly circulate hot water through the pipes but this is inefficient and will cost you money.

you could move the water heater closer,

you could install point of use tankless heaters that make hot water right under the sink, I think you may already have two in your home at the two that get water quickly,


if you are not good with plumbing time to call a plumber. or just live with it.

 

[fledglingme]

point of use will address the time to full temp problem,. you left out a few bits of information that forces me to guess here. but from your description i'd say that your talking about an electric water heater. and you've never flushed that tank. and i'm willing to bet that you also enjoy "harder" than normal water. scale builds up and if allowed to go too long, it can even cover the heating elements,once covered the elements burn out. try flushing out the tank..it takes a bit of hard work to get out the scale that builds up after 30years..and maybe it's past the point of "return on effort"

 

[97 FZJ80]

Have you tried removing the water restrictor from the shower head? I had the same problem with the hot water in my shower until I removed that #$%^ thing.

 

[freshspecbluegt]

The time to get hot water is purely a function of the length of pipe between the faucet and water heater, its diameter and the flow rate, you have to get through the cold water that is sitting in the pipe then you have to heat the pipe and what ever is arround it to get fully hot water, having the water heater in another building is a big part of the problem,

This is one of the things that is best to do when designing a home more difficult to fix later, it is best to put all the plumbing in one wall, short runs, with the water heater nearby, keeps building cost down also, the garage may be only 12' away "as the crow flies" but i'll bet the actual pipe run is much longer, who knows what route the pipes take to get there.

you could look at a circulator that will constantly circulate hot water through the pipes but this is inefficient and will cost you money.

you could move the water heater closer,

you could install point of use tankless heaters that make hot water right under the sink, I think you may already have two in your home at the two that get water quickly,


if you are not good with plumbing time to call a plumber. or just live with it.

I talked to a couple of people at the Home Depot about the circulator pump, it might be an idea if I can put it on a timer to turn on in the morning before we get up and then come on again in the early evening. Can the circulator be run in this fashion? I guess every house is different but how long would it take to get hot water near all the fixtures using a recirculator, I gues my questio here is are these high flow pumps or is it going to need 30min everytime it kicks on with cold pipes?

I don't think we have any point of use/tankless heaters, though I do like the idea of them. I would install one but we are only going to stay in this house for a couple of more years so I don't know if it is worth it to take the time and $$$ to install one.

point of use will address the time to full temp problem,. you left out a few bits of information that forces me to guess here. but from your description i'd say that your talking about an electric water heater. and you've never flushed that tank. and i'm willing to bet that you also enjoy "harder" than normal water. scale builds up and if allowed to go too long, it can even cover the heating elements,once covered the elements burn out. try flushing out the tank..it takes a bit of hard work to get out the scale that builds up after 30years..and maybe it's past the point of "return on effort"

No, we have a gas water heater, sorry should have included that, its probably 10-15 years old. My GF had some kind of service performed on it, maybe a flush, a year before we started dating so it hasn't been looked at for about 6 years. Like most areas of San Diego we have hard water. The fact that we ge hot water,eventually, for a good amount of time lends me to believe that the water heater is OK. Should I be looking at it more?

Have you tried removing the water restrictor from the shower head? I had the same problem with the hot water in my shower until I removed that #$%^ thing.

We installed nice shower heads in both showers and the first thing we did was toss those rings.

Thanks for the help

Ross

 

[EdsCruisin]

Even if the water heater is in another building 12 feet away, the time is too long. In both my houses the hot water runs are around 70-100 feet and it doesn't take 5 minutes to get there. That is also with 3/4 inch pipes. If you are running smaller pipes and don't have insulation I would start there. Use 3/4" pipes and insulate what you can. Then do your own clean out of the water heater and check the temperature settings on it.

 

[agomez]

your hot water heater tank is full of lime deposits time for a new one....

 

[-Spike-]

. Use 3/4" pipes...

In my opinion that's not good advice. That just means you'll have to move more cold water to get the hot water from the tank to the fixture.

I did an experiment. I checked the water flow from a sink faucet with a 25' long run of 1/2" pipe, then I put a 50' long 3/8" poly line between the angle stop and the sink fixture. The flow rate didn't change enough for me to see it with a crude measuring system (5 gal bucket and stopwatch). My conclusion is that the restriction in the faucet and angle stop outweighs the restriction in even 3/8" line, let alone 1/2". That made me want to install home runs of 3/8" lines from a manifold at the water heater to sinks for the hot water, to reduce wait times and hot-side pressure loss in the shower when another faucet is turned on. I'd keep the 1/2" runs to the showers and tubs since they are able to deliver a higher volume through the fixture.

Going from 1/2" lines (standard) to 3/4" lines will close to double the amount of water needed to flush out the lines, without making it move any faster. The only benefit would be less temp shock in the shower if that's a problem. Of course, newer shower fixtures use pressure-balancing valves anyway, so that problem is disappearing.

-Spike

 

[fledglingme]

i'm not expert at plumbing, but i've always thought that to have a circulating pump installed in a hot water system, you need a return pipe installed to allow the return to the water heater. in the case of a detached garage, that would require a bit of back yard digging( that might be the easyest part of the job too) is there away to accomplish this circulating feature with out adding this return?(short of opening the tap and let it dribble full time?)

 

[haystax]

There are retrofit circulator pumps - not exactly sure how they work but they are available. Look at Grundfos | The full range supplier of pumps and pump solutions for details on all the available recirc pumps. Simple google search will come up with quite a few places that sell them.

The real problem is your water is too hard. The water heater itself is probably scaled up and full of sediment. If it has an anode rod, it is probably worn out as well.

3/4" supply lines will definitely NOT help your situation. 3/8" homerun PEX is the way to go but not that handy for your application.

Have you taken your fixtures apart to see if the scale is localized to the specific fixtures. Usually the screens and cartridges are the first things to plug up.

Get a water test from a real lab, not Sears. I am very pleased with the water softener i bought from www.ohiopurewater.com and a new water heater and possibly tankless is probably your best bet for a real solution.

 

[fledglingme]

have you seen the condition of you'r pipes that service the house(underground thru the back yard) if they'r steel and after 30 years i would guess that they are so bad that replacement will soon be on you'r "to do list"

 

[freshspecbluegt]

Wow, lots of info, thanks for the responses.

Next step I am going to take is to try to determine how much hard water build up we are dealing with and try to clean it up/get it under control if there is a ton of it. Then I will probably look at the recirculator pump for the upstairs.

Will report back

Thanks
Ross

 

[Toyo FJ40]

Laing makes a recirc pump setup that doesn't need a return line to work. It hooks to the supply lines under the furthest sink from the hot water heater and pumps the hot water line into the cold water line till it gets warm. It has a clock so you can set it up to pump before the times you would need hot water. The only problem I've had with these is the cold water might not be as cold as it use to be. Some people want really cold water at their bathroom tap.

Laing Pumps

Kevin

 

[Toyo FJ40]

Wow, lots of info, thanks for the responses.

Next step I am going to take is to try to determine how much hard water build up we are dealing with and try to clean it up/get it under control if there is a ton of it. Then I will probably look at the recirculator pump for the upstairs.

Will report back

Thanks
Ross

Hard water deposits will affect flow rate. If you have a good flow then it's the distance. 3/4" pipe makes it worst because you have to drain all the volume of the line out before you get the hot water.(Like Spike said)

Kevin