I am having a problem in my house! Whenever I am taking a shower, washing dishes, doing laundry, etc. My hot water only lasts a good 3 minutes...LITERALLY!!! It pisses me off, especially now that it is 15 degrees outside! Does anybody have any advice on what I may do about the problem or what the problem may actually be? It has been this way since I moved into this house last January but I just now thought to post it on here thinking that one of the bright BBS posters must know something that can be done. Many thanks to anyone who can offer any great advice!
My guess would be a bad water heater. We replaced the one in my folks' home last weekend and it is working FABULOUSLY. It's really pretty easy to do too.
Second request: Is it an electric or gas water heater? Also, how old is the water heater? If it is electric, then you are likely to have one of these problems: 1. One of the heating elements has failed...........that can be replaced rather easily. 2. A buildup of minerals in the bottom of the tank that lessens the tank capacity.......which causes the hot water to run out quickly. It can be solved, but more time consuming than just switching out a failed element.
It ended up running about $300 to $400 all told. Had to buy some new copper interconnects, new gas-line connector, and we replaced some of the piping elbows up there. It's a 50 gallon Maytag heater. It would've cost $300 to have it installed, but we did it ourselves in about 5 hours. Oh, and ours was a gas one. I didn't even know that they made electric water heaters . . .
