Eli5: How does a hotel always have hot water for every occupant?
In: 1975
When designing the system you estimate the average high limit use of hot water and max capacity, then scale the heating system accordingly to meet that demand. It isn’t any different from properly designed household system, just bigger in scale. Most household underestimate their need on cheap out and choose a system that isn’t big enough for their actual need.
The math isn’t really that complex. You know what kind of showers, for example, every room has and if they all use hot water and max pressure how much material flow that is (in volume/time unit). Then you just scale up your heating system or storage capacity to be able to provide at least that much for a certain amount of time.
Now how you pull this off in practice. Well it is entirely up to you as a hotel owner when building your hotel. The systems wary greatly in execution depending on local sources of energy, their cost, how many floors and rooms you have, what kind piping you got, how much you estimate the use to be.
But to ensure there is always hot water when you turn the tap, you circulate the hot water circuit constantly and you keep the pipes insulated for minimal heat loss.
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