I am typically the first one in my house to take a shower and I like hot showers. I have noticed that if I take a shower first, the hot water is not that hot and doesn’t last very long. But if others take showers before me and the hot water has to recharge then the hot water is HOT and lasts a long time.
I have a 50 gallon hot water tank.
The only two things I have (besides sinks and showers) that use hot water are a dumb dishwasher and a dumb washing machine.
What I was thinking was to set up an automation in HA to somehow trigger something to use hot water for like 10 minutes in order to get the hot water heater to recharge.
Any ideas?
If you have “delay start” functions on your washing machines (dish & clothes), you can either do dishes overnight or clothes overnight as close to 3-4am as possible (assuming you’re waking up around 6 or 7).
There is not a great way to “automate” the heating of water in a traditional water heater and it would be a safety hazard to do so.
The only other good option is an inline electric water heater, but the cost of that will outweigh anything else.
If you’re eager to spend money on this, I’d look into newer appliances that you can set to run at a certain time of day if there is absolutely no functionality available.
This should be higher. No wasted water, low tech, and no cost. If the water heater has trouble retaining heat in the water then it definitely seems like an issue with the water heater itself, but this approach will reliably trigger a larger batch of fully reheated water at just the right time. Plus, if the water heater is electric then you’re even use electricity at non peak hours.