Hot water

Nathan, like me, loves hot showers - hot enough that your skin is pink when you get out.  Since all the males in my house take a shower/bath in the evening, they have to be careful so they do not use all the hot water.  Last night Nathan took a short shower (for him anyway) and then Bruce hops in immediately with Darren and runs out of hot water about two minutes into the shower.

When Bruce got out and starting yelling at Nathan for using all the hot water, I suggested turning the thermostat up on the water heater.  We had turned the temperature down when we had kids like all the safety experts recommend.  My theory was that if Nathan had to turn the temperature up in the shower, that was making the water heater work twice as hard.  If the thermostat got turned up, maybe the water heater would not have to work so hard and we would have hot water for a longer amount of time.

As an added bonus, I have been wanting to get Bruce to turn the water heater up.  When I would do dishes, I would have the water as hot as it could get, and sometimes that just never felt hot enough to get the dishes clean.