Why do some houses take time to heat the water while others have it near instantly?
In: Engineering
There are multiple factors, however the largest I’m delay between activating the hot tap and hot water flow is actually the type of pipe. See as water flows through the system it has to pass through a lot of relatively cold pipes and thus dumps a lot of heat energy into that pipe. This means that until that pipe is close to as warm as the water you won’t get any hot water from the tap. Now, the difference in timing comes from pipe material. More modern synthetic piping like pvc absorbs much less heat as compared to the more traditional copper pipes so the water will come out hot in the synthetic tubing faster.
It’s also slightly dependant on your water pressure. Houses with higher water pressure will have a faster flow rate. Faster flowing water has less time to lose heat to the pipe allowing for hot water to reach the user faster. However this matters to a lesser degree because water pressure and flow is only comfortable within a certain range. Anything more and it stings and anything less feels weak.
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