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Jun. 26th, 2006 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikThe last few days I've been coming home sweaty and dusty and craving a nice cool shower. By cool I mean just that -- not warm, not freezing, just below body temperature and a nice way to cool down.
The barge has a flow through hot water heater, which most of the time I am quite fond of. It has two settings, three flames, and two flames. The two flames setting is supposed to produce lower temperature hot water even when the water coming in is pretty warm, so this last bit I've had it set to two flames. But flow through heating is an interesting thing -- other than those two settings, it is essentially on, or off. If you reduce the amount of water going through the heater, the water will come out hotter. Or at least it will to a certain point. If you reduce the amount going through beyond a certain point it will shut off and the water coming out is cold.
The end result of this is that when adjusting the temperature for a cool shower, you can add more cool water, but if you try to add less hot water into the mix you'll mostly get less hotter water, which tends to be a wash. And if you slowly fiddle with the faucet, you'll eventually reach a point where it really is a refreshing perfect cool shower... for about fifteen seconds, because the water heater has shut itself off and it is about to become a cold shower.
For some reason I find this quite amusing. Practically, I've taken to turning it to be as cool as I can manage without turning off the heater while I do anything that involves soap, and then rinsing off in cold water, which is... bracing. Certainly, it makes these sunny days feel really good ;-)
The barge has a flow through hot water heater, which most of the time I am quite fond of. It has two settings, three flames, and two flames. The two flames setting is supposed to produce lower temperature hot water even when the water coming in is pretty warm, so this last bit I've had it set to two flames. But flow through heating is an interesting thing -- other than those two settings, it is essentially on, or off. If you reduce the amount of water going through the heater, the water will come out hotter. Or at least it will to a certain point. If you reduce the amount going through beyond a certain point it will shut off and the water coming out is cold.
The end result of this is that when adjusting the temperature for a cool shower, you can add more cool water, but if you try to add less hot water into the mix you'll mostly get less hotter water, which tends to be a wash. And if you slowly fiddle with the faucet, you'll eventually reach a point where it really is a refreshing perfect cool shower... for about fifteen seconds, because the water heater has shut itself off and it is about to become a cold shower.
For some reason I find this quite amusing. Practically, I've taken to turning it to be as cool as I can manage without turning off the heater while I do anything that involves soap, and then rinsing off in cold water, which is... bracing. Certainly, it makes these sunny days feel really good ;-)
