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Comment by zbrozek | Hacker News Reader

I'm an American citizen and I needed to go to the hospital in Coober Pedy in 2009. It was after hours, so I rang the bell up front and a cheerful nurse responded on the intercom. My case was deemed sufficient to merit a response, so the nurse and a doctor both came over at once and booted up the place. I got my exam, some crutches, and a prescription in about an hour and $45.

Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you're about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap. Makes it hard to find and fidget with coins.

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> Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you're about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap.

Seems like you'd get used to it quickly.

In Chinese apartments (in Shanghai, at least), there is a small water heater dedicated to the shower. It stores a certain amount of water at a temperature you configure, and when it runs out, your shower will be cold. (You're expected to set it much hotter than you want the shower, and mix it with cold water, which is unlimited, to get the shower temperature you want.)

This means it's impossible to take a two-hour hot shower. But it also means the showering process doesn't include "step 0: wait a few minutes for hot water to start coming out of the shower". When you turn on the hot water, you get hot water. It's really soured me on the American system.

> It's really soured me on the American system.

Tankless hot water systems have been available for awhile. Sounds like this is what you want to install.

Couple this with a pump/recirculation system and you'll have instant, endless hot water from any faucet or shower.

Granted, you won't have this option if you're renting and at the mercy of a landlord. But you can look for this in future apartments.

Some condo associations won't let you install them as it requires additional external piping for air intake and exhaust.

you know you can install tankless heaters at the shower in the US if you want instant hot water?

sinks too, theyre even easier. you can find kits at Home Depot.

The last three places I've lived in the United States all had tankless systems.

Like most comments on HN, "American System" is a gross oversimplification of a nation of almost 400 million people and experiences.

As an American, most places that I've lived in across the country had a delay before the hot water kicked in. Of course anyone can modify their home to do whatever they want, but we're discussing the average system in place in most residences.

It's not a "gross oversimplification" if it's the typical result.

I can't count the number of time Americans (from all over the States) have explained to me how diverse America actually is. Ironically it's only Americans who've done this.

Well it's usually when someone from outside America says "Americans do it this way" based on their vacations or even single trips to a single point in America, having stayed in an AirBNB or hotel or something.

To actual American citizens you might as well be characterizing France from your experience in Germany just because they're both in the EU.

Germany and France are pretty similar TBH. Though, like Americans, Europeans also get mad when you point out they are not as diverse as they imagine.

It's really hard to talk about things when you can't generalize a bit.

"100 million American homes have things set up this way" - oh no, let's divert the discussion to worry about the one guy who has a fully custom setup!

Tankless water heaters have a downside in that there's a minimum amount of flow before the heater turns on. I stayed at an Airbnb in Italy where I had to continuously run the sink in order to take a warm shower that wasn't scalding hot or cold. I also had to run the bathroom sink to get hot water at all in the kitchen because the kitchen faucet alone wasn't enough to trigger the heater!

Normally that starts to happen when the rubber diaphragms and o-rings in the pressure differential valves get old and break down.

What's the American system?

You turn on the hot water, and you get cold water. Then you sit and wait for a few minutes until you start getting hot water.

A few minutes is an exaggeration. I would guess 15-30 seconds. Obviously it will depend on location. Some places it happens faster, some places slower. But I'm fairly certain I've never had to wait more than 60 seconds anywhere in the US.

In fact I just went and checked with my shower - 23 seconds. And I haven't used any hot water since last night.

No, it can take a few minutes. A big factor is the diameter of the pipes used to carry the hot water. See: This Old House videos on the topic. Bigger is NOT better here; a larger pipe may take several minutes to empty out of cold water before hot water starts reaching you.

In the rental house we just moved from a couple months ago, the last homeowner did several amateur projects (or hired a handyman who worked at that level). They fitted a larger, elevated water heater, but also "upgraded" the water pipes in the attic to a ridiculously large diameter. Between that and the rental property management fitting water-saving low-flow fixtures, you could turn on a hot water faucet and go boil tea on an electric kettle (or something) in the meantime. By the time you're done drinking the tea, the running water might be getting warm.

I believe you, but my hunch is you're an outlier. I've lived probably a dozen places in the US, not to mention the likely hundreds of places I've slept throughout my life. I don't recall every having to wait more than a minute for hot water.

Ultimately this is just my anecdata. Maybe your story is more common than I realize.

Anywhere can have plumbing issues and having wide hot water pipes is a problem as it waste energy when they cool down.

In such cases run the hot water in your sink it dramatically increases the flow rate. Alternatively, install a tankless water heater next to the shower.

Long waits are more common than you think. Suppose you have 100 feet of 3/4" pipe and a 1 gpm showerhead, it takes 2.3 minutes for water to move from your water heater to the showerhead. And you not only have to move the water, but heat up the pipe itself, so it takes even longer. I'm living in such a home now. I'll be installing a recirculation loop as I remodel. And probably some point-of-use heaters.

You turn on the hot water, and you get cold water. Then you sit and wait for a few minutes until you start getting hot water.

Depends on where you are. In places I've lived in the southwest, you turn on the hot water and you immediately get hot water. You turn on the cold water, and you immediately get very warm water.

Because it's the desert. And the water comes from outside, so it assumes the ambient temperature. In the winter you might get "cold" water, but it's nothing like the cold water you get in places like Boston or Minneapolis.

Had similar experience in Beppu, Japan. Not only is it at the southern tip oj Kyushu, but also very vulcanic with hot springs everywhere - like, there is actual scolding steam comming out of pavement in some places, specially in the Kanawa district!

At first I wondered why they have those mini fridges in japanese hotel rooms and this is why - only way to get cold water in the summer is t put it into the fridge first! :)

Mini-fridges are just a really nice amenity though. :)

I have taken literally thousands of showers in America and that isn't consistent with my experience at all. If it takes more than ten seconds for my shower to heat up, it means that the water heater is dead and waiting any longer won't make a difference. The only place I've had to wait longer than that (but still not long enough that I'd go sit down to wait) is at some hotels, maybe because their plumbing is longer?

I've stayed in places where it can take a minute or longer for the hot water to show up.

Yea, it's most homes, and apartments.

The cost to remodel, and permit proses, causes owners to just live with it.

The drought should make the plumbing permit free.

Too many small towns, and even rich counties, are counting on those permit fees for income.

You may have lived mostly in apartments or small homes. In larger or multi-story homes, the water heater may be some distance from the shower.

I grew up in a multi-story ~1700 sq ft home where I took daily showers on the second floor, traditional tanked hot water heater in the basement. Took < 20 seconds for water to turn hot.

Well then I take it all back?

You still sit and wait though? Of course 10 seconds is not comparable to a few minutes, but the mechanism seems like it would be the same.

Another place I stayed in Coober Pedy on another visit had a warning at 15 seconds which mitigated the problem. Both places only let you load up five minutes of shower time, and I found that my showers took 7-8 minutes.

Why not just take ambient-temperature showers, and save hot ones for special occasions, if ever?

In my town, outside of Boston, the water coming out of the faucets in mid-June is about 55F without mixing in hot water; an ambient-temperature shower might be reasonable for a week or three per year.

> It's really soured me on the American system.

What American systems? There's lots of different water heating setups in the US, including “small dedicated tankless heater for the shower”, whole house tankless or hybrid system, etc., etc...

> it also means the showering process doesn't include "step 0: wait a few minutes for hot water to start coming out of the shower". When you turn on the hot water, you get hot water. It's really soured me on the American system.

The "American System" such as it is, is a byproduct of increasing efficiency. If you buy an old house, built when shower heads were 5GPM, the piping was sized to handle that load. When you switch to 2.5GPM shower heads (mandated as the maximum by federal law in 1994), or lower (1.25GPM is easy to find and what I use) then you've got 4X the amount of water setting in the pipes that needs to be slowly flushed out.

Any competent builders of new homes will minimize the size of hot water pipes to greatly reduce the amount of cold water that needs to be flushed out. Instead of 3/4 or 1/2" pipes, 3/8" or even 1/4" pipes may be adequate for a 1.8GPM (California 2018 maximum) shower, and greatly reduces the amount of cold water standing in the pipes.

The US system of using natural gas (or electric heat pumps) offers about 4X better energy efficiency than smaller resistive electric point-of-use water heaters. In warmers climates (southern US, and much of Asia) the difference can be small. And the centralized US system can be retrofitted easily enough. There are pump systems which can be installed under bathroom sinks where you just push a button and the cold water is pumped through, automatically shutting off when it becomes warm/hot.

Increasing energy efficiency, mayhaps, but running cold water in a shower for several min while you wait for it to heat up is not very water efficient.

You’re still flushing about* the same amount of water out of the pipes though. It just takes longer with a water efficient shower head. And as the parent poster points out this is solved by using smaller pipes.

* some of the hot water may cool while you wait so there may be a marginal amount of extra wastage at the outset.

> This means it's impossible to take a two-hour hot shower.

Do you actually have the habit of taking two-hour hot showers on a running shower? How incredibly wasteful would that be?

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