We currently have a standard 60 gallon water heater. It is a long run to the bathrooms, so we have a hot water recirculating pump. But my wife likes to take baths in our large tub, and often there is not enough hot water for her to be comfortable – sometimes there’s plenty, sometimes hardly any.
Our water heater is about 15 years old, but seems to be operating fine.
Which of these options or upgrades do you recommend, or do you have another suggestion?
1. Turn off the recirculating pump and just live with the long wait for hot water at the business end of the house (seems that wastes a lot of water).
2. Buy a water heater with a larger tank (maybe 90 gallons?)
3. Replace the water heater with an on-demand water heater for the whole house
4. Keep the w/h with the tank but add an in-line, on demand heater just before the two distant bathrooms
5. Add a supplemental water heater with a small tank just before the two distant bathrooms
Those are the options I thought of, maybe there are others. Also, what should I do with the recirculating system in each of these scenarios?
I’d like to get unbiased opinions from the good folks here first. I know local water heater sellers could make suggestions, but I know they’d only recommend whatever products they personally sell, which may or may not be the best solution for me.
All advice will be greatly appreciated!
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
That tub must be huge or a hot tub which should have a heater built into it. generally a modern tug is about 8-12 gallons. a hot tub can be 10-50 gallons
Not enough hot water with 60 gallon heater !!! with circulator !
What is the thermostat set at ?
Normally you would get approx 30 gallons before the water starts cooling to a noticeable degree . with a circulating system that should increase to about 45-50 gallons of water .
A whole house on demand you would have to wait for the heated water to get there but it should stay hot as long as it keeps running
a better solution with them is to have one at or near the use site.
depending upon how it is hooked up a supplemental tank would only supply additional volume but not much for added heat unless the thermostat is turned up.
When was the sediment last flushed out ?
What you could do is put a waterheater burner under the tub turn it up and violla boiling hot water, toss in some veggies ….
Tankless water heaters (good brands) are great. They are also expensive up front as far as cost. This is more true if you are talking gas units. 15 years for a water heater is stretching it. While it may be working "fine", it is energy inefficient and costing you more than a new unit to operate. I would suggest a new unit and have a switch installed that will operate the circulating pump only when needed. They even make motion operated switches.
We have a tankless water heater and love it. It can take a few minutes to get hot water though—so sometimes I will turn the water on hot and let it run while I’m loading the dishwasher so that I can wash the extra dishes as soon as I’m done. Just little things like that. My sister in law has a fairly large house and has 2 of the tankless water heaters. One where the kitchen and 2 bathrooms are and the other near the bedrooms and 3 bathrooms are. They have had no problems with them either.
Hot water taking a long time to get to a fixture and not having enough hot water are two separate issues. If filling a large tub causes you to run out of hot water quickly, that is a sign of sediment build-up in the tank. Sediment will do two things. First, it reduces the capacity of the tank. Your 60 gal tank may have 10 gal of sediment on the bottom reducing it’s capacity to 50 gal. Second, the burner has to heat the water through all that sediment which increases recovery time. The average life of storage water heaters is around 10 years. So, in my opinion, any of your options that involve keeping your existing tank are out. I think it is time to replace it. Now the question is tank or tankless. If your water heater is electric you can forget about tankless. If you have nat. gas or propane, then tankless would be a good option for you. They are considerably more expensive than tanks. But they will provide continuous hot water at whatever temp you want and they use less energy. Also, a tankless should last about twice as long as a tank. Special sizing and venting considerations need to taken when going tankless, so you will need a plumber to give you an estimate. If you decide to get another tank, then I would suggest 2 50 gal. is series rather than one 90 gal. Good luck.
Is it a Jet tub? you can add a heater for them that will keep the water toasty as long as she wants.
Other than that try insulating the pipes if they are not already.
A tankless water heater will leave you waiting for hot water because you can not hook a circulator up to them.
You maybe able to rig a small 15 gallon tank with a tankless hot water heater so you can continue using your circulator. I never heard of this being done but it is something to look into.
Tankless water heaters required extremely heavy gauge cables as they draw a huge amount of power. You would need an electrician to set that up.
I like the idea of the small tank nearer the two distant bathrooms. You may still need an electrician. I question the concept of a "small tank water heater", since you said it is a big tub.
Consider this though, they do make "heat pump" type tank water heaters, that draw a lot less power than regular water heaters. I have not used one but it might be a good idea.
Or, if you are really cheap like me, just, insulate the hot water pipes from the water heater to the distant bathrooms, and give your wife access to the hot water FIRST.
I would agree with the group. Your old water heater is not operating correctly. It is time to replace it
60 gallon is more than enough for my family of four with a teenage daughter that likes very long showers. The kids take showers back to back and I never run out of hot water.
With your long run I like the tank heater option and recirculation pump.
Make sure the recirculation system is working properly.
I have a 199,000BTU gas tankless water heater and I’m hooked up to a propane tank outside. We use it for our whirlpool tub, regular tub, dishwasher etc. and it works great. Make sure you get one that has a thermostat that can be set to 140F. Some have a maximum of 120F and that just wasn’t hot enough for us. I keep ours on 130F and run a little cold with it when running our bath water. Because of the increased energy efficiency I cut our gas bill by about 1/3 and we also got a $300 tax credit on our income taxes. You should definitely look into tankless.