Hi,
I recently moved into a new house, it's got an unfinished basement with a hot water heater there. Two of the bathrooms are 100 feet apart, and the kitchen is about in between them.
The issue I am having is when I turn on the hot water, it takes forever (like 2 full minutes) for hot water to be available in the showers, kitchen sink, or any of the bathrooms. I believe this is probably due to the long runs of copper pipe from the heater to the faucets, combined with a relatively cold basement which allows the water in the pipes to be cold.
This is wasting a lot of water and is annoying.
Here are my ideas:
1. Install some small, electric on-demand heaters under the sinks to hasten the flow of hot water
2. Put some sort of recirculating loop with a pump or something to keep it all warm
3. Insulate the pipes
4. ?
I've never seen a place that takes so long to give me hot water. Even the kitchen, which is closest to the hot water heater takes more than 30 seconds of full flow hot water to get warm, and then gradually gets hot. When I do get hot water, it's exceptionally hot, scalding hot (I turned up the heater to try to help this issue) so it's there but just takes forever.