The Story of Our Shower

[gemfyre]

Turn on hot water before stepping into shower. Water pressure is initially good but drops significantly once the hot water actually comes through (why is this? I've noticed it with many taps).
Turn on cold water. Water pressure increases. Temperature decreases slightly to a temperature that is great in Winter, but almost too hot to stand in Summer.
Turning the cold tap on more increases the water pressure, but the temperature doesn't change.
Turning the hot tap OFF slightly makes the water HOTTER.
Eventually turn the hot tap all the way off and cold water comes through again.
Turn hot tap slightly. Water reaches perfect temperature for Summer showers.
This lasts... maybe a minute? Then the water goes freezing again.
Turning on the hot tap more doesn't make a difference.
Turn cold tap all the way off and hot eventually comes back through.

Repeat this procedure while trying to actually wash onself.

We got a water saving shower head at some time but discovered that we have some archaic water heater that doesn't work with one. Here we are, trying to do the right thing to be thwarted by a stupidly designed water heater which we can't replace because it's a rental.

*sigh*

At least showers in Winter are good.

Comments

[melberon.livejournal.com]

Hoorah for crappy instantaneous hot water systems! Although usually you can adjust the temperature on them? I've been meaning to do that on the one here.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

I've heard this works: http://www.showersaver.com.au/

[lotus79.livejournal.com]

We got a gas hot water system now. Which is good b/c it heats up quick and to a nice hot temp (too hot to not use the cold tap tho)

Problem is there is about a 30 second delay on changing the temp. so it's too hot, you turn the cold tap on more... then a little more.... then it's right. Then 30 seconds later, the pilot light senses the change and overcompensates and so you get blasted with cold water and have to turn the cold tap all the way off and start over.

[jet-ski.livejournal.com]

yeah, instantaneous has problems with a low flow rate... we have an instantaneous gas HWS and a low flow shower head and the responsiveness is far less than satisfactory. Solar hot water is on the list of things to spend money on but because the large part of the govt rebate is if you trade in an electric HWS, it's going to cost us a few grand out of our own pockets. I was hoping that some better rebates would come through with the ETS legislation but as that has been killed, we are going to have to bite the bullet at some point.

[princessapphire.livejournal.com]

The bath in my mom's room has been messing up for awhile now. You turn on the hot water and it's SCALDING. So to cool it down you turn on a little cold water, right? No. You have to turn the cold water over half way on before it even actually starts flowing, but by that point the water turns freezing. You turn it back down and it turns completely off. It's like there's only one point that turns it on and off and it's either all the way on and freezing or all the way off and scalding.

Luckily, the shower doesn't work so your only option is a bath and you can run the hot and then run the cold to cool it down, but you have to wait awhile before you can climb in lol. It does drive me nuts when I use it just to wash my hair though.

[carywin.livejournal.com]

Such is the nature of (older) instantaneous gas. The only thing you can try is to adjust the temperature control in the unit. This is a bit of a misnomer, since it's actually a flow control valve. It works because when more water is flowing through the heating coils, it doesn't get as hot, conversely when the flow is lower, the water comes out hotter. First thing to try would be to open the water heater, find the control for "Temperature" and turn it all the way to cold.