What type of water heater?

Some of the water saving fixtures sold today don't produce enough volume to trigger a tankless to start heating right away.

You might want to do some research into getting some type of recirculating loop. You'll use less water, but more energy.

Our house is larger, but we have 2 tankless heaters, one at either end of the house. The master bath is pretty close to one, but the kitchen is quite far from the closest one and even with a recirculating loop, it still takes a couple of minutes for really hot water to come through.

Chipsa, we have a AO Smith Proline Commercial Grade 50 gallon gas water heater.

Do you know if you have a recirculating loop? If so, it could be plumbed incorrectly or there could be a bad cartridge somewhere. They also could have failed to remove the heat trap at the heater's hot water outlet.

Sorry poorly designed home from the start IMO . Start by having the issues checked mentioned by catbuilder.

It is what it is. If you are plumbed with a PEX home run setup where each fixture has its own dedicated supply, it can take a while for hot water to get where its needed. Typical solution would be to install either a hot water call/recirculator system or a 5 gallon water heater under the cabinet.

Patricia Colwell Consulting, you truly have no idea!! I don’t think we could’ve picked a worse builder if we tried. I’m trying to determine what I’m being crazy about and what is a realistic complaint, because there hasn’t been one thing our builder has done correctly on our house. Heartbreaking for our first home build.

Catbuilder, I don’t know about any of those items. We just closed on the home a couple of weeks ago. The builder took 2 years to build the home and refused to do final walk thru with us. There have been so many problems with the home that I don’t know where to begin. I guess I’m wondering if this hot water situation is something I should contact the builder over. Unfortunately we do not have a good relationship with builder due to the many issues with the house. So much to the point that the thought of contacting him stresses me out so bad because with each issue we’ve had he has told us the problem was some how our fault. For example: We have electrical outlets that are in the wrong place, are crooked or in a spot that you can’t even access them. They do not match the final electrical drawings we signed off on, but when we expressed our concerns the builder told us it was our fault because we should’ve checked all outlets and electrical wiring when electric was first installed when the house was just basically a wood frame.

Our house is on a slab foundation, master bath is 55 feet from waterheaters....it takes a good 4 minutes....the cement slab is cold.

Hi, Take the showerhead off then time it.

Woodbutcher

Hi Elizabeth- I’m sorry your first home build has been a disappointment. I’d be upset too. Catbuilder has a great idea. Our hot water took forever too, so we installed three recirculators: kitchen and 2 bathrooms. It helps a lot but I will say the recirculators have had to be repaired or replaced after a couple years. They’re a couple hundred $$ each.

We installed this and now have immediate hot shower water.

A gravity recirculating loop has no mechanical parts that would wear out or need to be replaced.

Elizabeth, it is easy to check if you have a recirculating loop. Look at your water heater and see if there is a pipe coming into the bottom of it, where the drain valve is.

A very common malady, unfortunately. Leave the hot on a barest drip, or account for the warm up time. I bet bigger issues are coming your way.

I will mention I hate a slab build anywhere but the hottest climate.. A crawl space is the answer if no basement.

We have really low water pressure so getting hot water to the baths takes a long time. I got so tired of washing my hands in cold water, I had a small 2.5 Gallon tank installed under the bathroom sink. It’s instantly hot now. The plumber also removed all flow restrictirs he could, which helped a bit.

Olychick- I’m gonna tuck away your idea when or if I need it. Thanks!

What I have always done is to turn on the lavatory hot tap and let it run before gathering up my clothes for the day. So I had hot water at the shower when I was ready for it. Depending on how your bathroom is plumbed, this could be a work around.

However, I replaced that 30ish year old faucet within the last month--low flow, of course, so that doesn't work as good as with the old tap. I may explore removing the water restrictor, if possible, from the lav faucet if I find the added delay is enough of a nuisance to bother with.

@eld161 thanks! Will totally look into!

@jan Moyer. Thank you for the tip. We are located in central Florida, so I didn’t really think slab would effect. We’ve lived in Florida all our lives, and only time we really encountered long wait times for hot water were in much older homes. Ours was just built, so it’s frustrating 😕

@olychick, thanks for info!!!

That is within the flow guidelines of most designed systems. If you want warmer quicker, a point of use in a close in closet or under the sink can aid with that. Just have the hot water line feed into it. You will have almost instant hot water for hand washing, and showering both.

I'd think about installing a tankless water heater near the master bath. It won't be inexpensive, but it will be worth it so you're not wasting water.

First, take a look at the hot water heater to see if you have a re-circ pump. Then check to see if it is plugged in. Then look to see if the valse is set to actually re-circ. (The house we bought had the re-circ system shut off while it was for sale. We opened the valve, and hot water delivery to kitchen sink went from 2 mins to 10 seconds.) Hoping that helps.

"I'd think about installing a tankless water heater near the master bath. It won't be inexpensive, but it will be worth it so you're not wasting water"

I looked into this but my water pressure/flow rate won't work with a tankless. The little tank I installed only works for the sink, so I have to wait for the shower, but that is better than washing my hands 100% of the time in cold water, because I'd never wait 2 min for warm from the big tank.

MY 1965 house takes a while to get hot water to the shower. I turn on the shower and go get clothes, by the time I ge tback, the water is getting hot. No problem.