I moved recently from a 2-bedroom unit to a efficiency unit in the *same* complex. I am confident that the water heater that is in my apartment is the same model that was in the 2-bedroom unit. However, There seem to be less volume, less temperature, and less pressure in hot water. It’s not as hot as the hot water in my previous apartment, there are not enough for 2 people to have a shower, and it is coming out weak. I don’t think it’s the dip…something… Is there any way for me to change any setting of the water heater, so that I can have my good old hot and strong shower back?
Not enough hot water for a long shower.?
January 17th, 2010 by My Efficient Planet Leave a reply »
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Is it gas or electric? There should be a thermostat on the heater. Secondly if its electric one of the elements could be non-functioning.
I know a way to fix the weak water prssure problem.
take a needle and poke out all the holes in the shower head, which will clean it off and it helps the water.
thats what we do. :]
it could be your hot water tank going bad or if u dip ur shower head in lcr that will probably increase pressure a little bit
I don’t know if you have it in the States,but here in Canada there is a cleaner called CLR (calcium,lime,rust) that can be bought in most hardware stores.If you put some of that in a bowl and soak your shower-head for a couple minutes it should fix the pressure problem.
Most hot water heaters have a thermostatic control on them,if you turn the temp. up you will use less hot water in your showers
You need to look at several things;First,youy could have a shower head that has greater volume than the previous. The standard uses 2.5 gals/minute.You can test by getting a gallon bucket,run the showerhead with the cold water fully turned on (doesn’t have to be hot water to determine flow rate) for 15 seconds & multiply by 4 the amount of water in bucket for your flow rate. If more than 2.5 gallons you should change the shower head to one rated 2.5 gpm or less.If it were the dip tube you would probably be getting intermittent shots of cold & hot. Do you have an individual heater for your apartment or do you share a commercial type with other tennants? If you have your own if its gas it could be a bad thermostat in the gas valve,if its electric you could have a bad element or a bad thermostat.
If the pressure problem is only with the hot water and not the cold, your water heater could be clogged with lime. If your heater is electric, this can be removed by taking out the lower element, scooping out the lime. Chances are if it’s that plugged up the element is probably shot also. This is probably a job for the maintenance guy. Big job.