Shower trouble
Hi,
Im new to this caravan lark and have a bit of a problem with the shower. When we were away the wife wanted a shower in the caravan so there pops off but after 3 min the hot water went cold.
I have a Sprite Alpine 4 all is working well and the hot water and gas are both fine. I have read that people use the showers all the time so the wife thought she would give it ago. HELP is there something i'm doing wrong or is it just that the hot water only last for about 3 min. please help. Thanks
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It will vary with the time of year a bit, as incoming water mixing with the hot, as the tank empties, will be much colder at this time of year. It will also depend on how hot you like the shower and type of shower head fitted. However, 3 minutes of continuous use, reasonably hot, would be about average. If ours is left on boost while showering, it might stretch to 4 minutes in the warmer weather.
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For showers in the various vans over the years we have always used gas AND electric to speed up the heating of the stored hot water, which is usually only about 5 ltrs or so, a gallon in old money.. If you can't use gas and electric, choose gas only, it is usually far more powerful.
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Most people turn the shower on to get wet, turn it off, soap/shampoo themselves, then turn the water back on to rinse themselves.
What Steve says is right. Keeping the water temperature as low as is comfortable will help as the more hot water you use, the more it will be diluted by incoming cold.
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depending on how urgent your shower is, it makes little difference how you heat the water.....some methods just do it more quickly (gas) than others (electric)......I believe there is no 'mixed mode' when heating water only on a Truma Combi...even if set, it defaults to electric only...
the Combi tank holds 10 ltrs of water, heated to 60deg and mixed with cold via the shower mixer, you will get (roughly) 14+ ltres of 'plenty hot enough' showering water...
however, the trick is to be sparing with this during the showering process.
i generally go first, run sink hot tap to ensure water at the shower will be hot, wet with the shower and turn off...
use shower gel, shampoo etc...
turn shower back on and rinse.....
hop out and OH gets in, repeating the process but (due to my thriftiness) she will be able to (comparitively) luxuriate in the remaining hot water.
as two showers are completed within five minutes, leaving the water heating on during this time achieves not much, and (AFAIK) the boost function is designed only to prioritise water heating by turning off space heating if both have been selected.
if space heating isn't on, it does nothing.
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OH used the shower in our 2005 Swift daily for about 3 weeks some 8 years ago whilst I was altering bathroom and shower in our home and a lot of associated work suck as floor screeds, wall build outs, walk in shower etc. She seemed to use about 13 to 15 litres of water from the aquaroll and we had an eco camel shower head which did reduce water usage by bleeding air into the spray.
I got that messy that after working I would light the barbie about 7pm and have a stripped wash in a large builders bucket half filled with hot water using a saucepan to pour water over my head. We have a large covered patio and I was too filthy to want to use and clean the caravan shower after 12 hours of graft and before starting our barbecue
She never complained of running out of hot water but although the aquaroll was in the shade it was August. In winter more hot water is needed as the aquaroll contents would be cooler.
Definitely, wet, water off, soap up, rinse off
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We use our shower all the time in our caravan and we do the same as Tinwheeler suggests, soap and wash off. We wouldn’t expect the shower to behave the same as the domestic one. We have 10 litres in the hot tank, mixed with cold from the Aquaroll, and we can manage 2 showers (my wife takes longer than me) using gas and electric to heat the water, using the above method.
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In this sort of weather, if one can, use the onboard tank to supply the "cold" for the shower, as if the water has been inside for 12 hours or so it isn't quite as cold as from outside.
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When the dealer fitted our inboard tank to our new Knaus Starclass, he did just that - in that the water in the van is delivered directly from the inboard tank which then then tops up automatically from the Aquaroll. Apparently it's the standard system in Airstreams which they also handle. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't the same as our previous Bailey with a switch dedicated to each tank - but I can now see distinct advantages in 'their' system.
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I guess it boils down to whether we take a shower for hygiene purposes or for that therapeutic experience. The former requires possibly just a quick rub down which does the trick whilst the latter an exuberance at leisure that hits the spot but uses much water.
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as two showers are completed within five minutes, leaving the water heating on during this time achieves not much, and (AFAIK) the boost function is designed only to prioritise water heating by turning off space heating if both have been selected.
if space heating isn't on, it does nothing.
Probably depends on the system BB. It certainly has an affect on our Alde. Boost can be put on for half an hour at a time, this then heats the water to 65C rather than the normal 50C. It therefore goes a bit further.
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I never thought I would find people's showering habits interesting, and weird at the same time!😁
I tend to always pick a fully serviced pitch mainly for the shower.
We have the Alde system, which on a morning goes on boost regardless, for breakfast washing up, then we both shower. The system is on electric and gas when we are awake and in the caravan.
I just wash normally, no stop start or skimping on the gel, and I can still enjoy the remaining piping hot water on my poorly shoulder.
Give it 20 minutes then Michelle showers with plenty of hot water to wash her hair too.
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When we got our previous van back in 1998, the salesman who did the handover gave us lots of tips on how to get the best from the various facilities available, and one of the main ones was to turn off the water while soaping up as we might well run out of hot water otherwise. Do salesmen not offer any advice on these things these days?
Our present van has Alde heating so we make good use of the boost on the water as we frequently use the shower in the van. While a serviced pitch is a great thing to have when using a lot of water in the van, the additional £3.90 per night on top of the already often pretty steep cost per night, mainly rules out serviced pitches for us on Club sites.
With our on board tank, we have 80 litres available anyway. I empty the wastemaster after my shower, so plenty of room for OH's shower water.
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£3.90 service pitch supplement, I think I'm right in saying is higher than we have experienced on other sites, but I would still pay this if that pitch type was available.
Our caravan is treated as our second home, so we want every possible convenience to make it such.
It lives on a serviced seasonal pitch all year round, and when we go away, four times a year, we like the same level of comfort as we are used to.
In the grand scheme of things service pitch supplement isn't a high percentage cost overall, but even so when it comes to making a choice of site to stay on, overall price can be a deciding factor if there are site similarities within the area of choice.
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In the past a lot of salesmen were also LV users ,but the modern "sales executives?" seem to just be looking at how little to give you for your px to enhance the amount of commission they get ,then pass every thing else to the warranty dept
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Reverting back to the original post,
The obvious question is, " Was the hot water tank actually full of hot water?"
Which isn't as daft as it sounds, did you/they do any washing up, or running of the hot taps prior to showering?
We do maximise our shower water availability by making sure we have a full hot water tank heated to the maximum temperature allowed by our system, Alde call this " Boost".
From Alde:-
The Hot Water Boost function—the tap icon on the digital control panel—cuts out the central heating for 30 mins while another 8.4 litres of hot water is heated to >65 °C. This amounts to ≈15 litres of heated water, mixed. Assuming an average flow rate of 3 litres per minute, this gives ≈5 minutes of continuous heated water for showers.
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I would say, when showering, we are using way more than 3 litres per minute, more like 6 litres, so probably a max of 3 minutes of continuous showering when the weather is warm.
While I can shower in less than 3 minutes, my OH has longish hair and would struggle to wash it too within that time. By turning off while soaping/ shampooing, a decent shower and hair wash is achievable.
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For the vast majority of the time, through out the year, we use the shower in the van. We switch the Alde fast water heater, on electric only, on first, 30 min-1hr before we get up. OH then has her shower while I take Flyte out for his first walk, having set the the fast water heater on again. I then have my shower either after breakfast, about 40 mins later, or in the afternoon. Always have sufficient hot water regardless of the outside temperature, and only use our external aquaroll.
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the main driver, whatever the system, is the size and temperature of the hot water tank....
the Truma Combi is 10 ltrs, the ALDE 8.4
having a serviced pitch or a very large water tank does nothing to extend the time of 'a nice hot shower'....that ten ltrs (or less) plus mixed in cold, is all you've got....
agreed, one occupant showering first and then reheating the boiler for the second will give two longer seperate showers....just depends if you want to wait that 20mins or not...
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We find that on EHU we don’t have as much hot water than when we’re using gas. No problem just for washing up but when it comes to showers we put the gas on as well. OH says the electrical heating element is higher in the tank than the gas one so is only heating half the tank.
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I have been thinking about a low technology solution to the problem of too little hot water for a reasonably long shower and I may have a solution. First some assumption/bits of information.
- Available volume of "hot" water is too little even when diluted with cold. This is limited by the capacity of the "boiler", its heating elements and its temperature setting.
- The hot water is generally far too hot to be used directly.
- Caravan pumps will safely pump only cold water.
- Shower heads could be given a seperate piped supply.
- Thermostatic mixers are available.
So what I envision is that a further tank of slightly less capacity is added to store heated water from the "boiler". This tank would be well insulated and feed solely to the shower head. Its supply would be taken from the normal hot water piping.
The way it would work is that when a shower was desired the shower head would be run to waste on hot tap until hot water started to come through, then turned off. At this point the additional tank would be full of very hot water, and the "boiler" full of cold.
Depending on the boiler capacity and the power of the heating system, after a short time the boiler would also be full of hot water. The water in the additional (insulated) tank would still be very hot, probably too hot to use directly for a shower. However, the thermostatic mixer valve would reduce that high temperature with a mix with a small amount of cold water as the shower was taken.
The additional tank would be replenished with the very hot water from the boiler and as that came through to the shower the thermostatic valve would adjust with a mix of a greater proportion of cold to maintain a constant output temperature.
This could work off a multi-Aquarol set up but is probably best suited to a serviced pitch. In my caravan the tank could fit below the fixed bed on the other side of the wall from the shower. All I need to decide is how best to insulate it.
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Sounds great except for a couple of things. Reduction in stowage space and a further reduction in the already minimal payload limits.
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....or ALDE/Truma producing a 'maxi' unit with, say, 50% more capacity which wouldn't take up that much more room to fit...
would take proportionately more gas/leccy/time to heat but might be useful...
or accept that van showers are a bit of a compromise and use with this understanding...
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The only thing that has improved our shower is the eco camel shower head, I think it reduces the water supply slightly by aerating it. In winter the hot water doesn't last as long but I prefer using the van shower rather than traipsing across a chilly or wet site, or both! That said, when things freeze up I'm glad to have site facilities. I regard the van shower as basic but useful.
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Alde do produce this and it's not that heavy at 2.3 kg. The downside is it would make for a very expensive shower.I couldn't get the Alde price list to open, but I believe it is horrendously expensive.
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