Why can my shower go from extreme hot/cold very quickly, but my faucet takes forever to change between temperatures?
In: Engineering
If you’re running an electric shower, then the shower unit itself is what heats the incoming cold water, on the fly, and it’s far faster responding than trying to get hot water from the house water heater.
It depends on the flow rate of your shower. It’s almost certainly much higher than your bathroom faucet. Faucets usually have aerators, which constrict flow to avoid splashing and to save water. Yours is probably around 1GPM (Gallons Per Minute). Most showers are around 3GPM.
So when more water flows through, the faster the hot water from the tank reaches you.
Your shower (hopefully) pumps out water faster than your faucet which flushes the cold water out of the pipes more quickly.
Distance to the shower from the boiler is shorter than the distance to your faucet (or has more pipe) – this means there is more cold water to get out of the pipe until the hot comes through
Flow rate. A shower puts out around 6-10 liters per minute, while a typical sink faucet is around 1-4 l/m
This also depends on the length of piping between the water heater and the given outlet. It’s likely that the way your own shower is plumbed, the pipes are shorter between the shower v.s. the bathroom sink.
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