Eli5: How does a hotel always have hot water for every occupant?
In: 1975
They don’t always. I stayed at a well known chain in a well known city a few years ago. I was on the 6th or 7th floor and had to run thehot water for 10 to 15 minutes before you could get hot water out of the shower. I mean you had to run hot water in the tub, the shower, and the sinks at the same time to get hot water in 15 minute time frame. I complained to the management. They sent a maintenance person who informed me that the number of guests was low at the time and there was not enough hot water usage to keep the pipes warm and there was nothing that could be done. I was in a 3 room suite, so this was not a cheap room. I complained to the management and the chain, they did not seem to care. I won’t be staying there again.
I’ve worked in multiple hotels over the past 12 years and seen a few different setups. The bottom line is that they all have large storage tanks, as well as high output boilers. Everything in hotels is based on redundancy. EVERYTHING. The hotel I work at now can run on 2 of our boilers if we absolutely have to…. So we have 6 of them. There’s also 6 storage tanks, each holding around 1,000 gallons of water. We put out between 140 and 160 degrees F (60-71C) through the whole hotel, so by the time it gets up to the rooms, it comes down to our sweet spot of 115-119 (46-49C). It takes a perfect storm of bullshit for a hotel to lose hot water. I unfortunately have witness that perfect storm on a couple of occasions.
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