Eli5: How does a hotel always have hot water for every occupant?

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Eli5: How does a hotel always have hot water for every occupant?

In: 1975

32 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Right now I’m working on a high rise with apartments and they don’t have hot water tanks, they have steam heat exchangers. Basically the water is on a circulation loop and is constantly flowing through a radiator that is meshed with another radiator filled with medium pressure steam (230°-250°)
That steam is constantly keeping the domestic hot water at an extremely high temperature (180ish°), then flows to a mixing valve to temper it with cold water down to like 100ish° depending on the person setting it. That tempered water is what goes to your shower mixing valve and you fine tune the heat some more. This is common for hospitals, dorms, hotels etc that have a steam system, my city has municipal steam provided to the larger high rises paid as a utility like gas and electric.

Other systems will have large water heaters that do something very similar but don’t need a heat exchanger. They just feed high quantities of very hot water to the mixing valve that as needed all automated with thermostats so it just kicks on whenever the water line drops below the threshold. This can be done with or without a storage tank.

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