If you live in a busy household, you may have had the experience of getting a blast of hot water in the shower because another family member flushed the toilet while you were showering. While this doesn’t happen under ideal circumstances, it is a common issue in many American homes. Once you understand what causes the problem, you will be in a position to do something about it. Learn why and how it happens and some easy solutions to the problem:
If flushing the toilet in your home causes the water in the shower to get extremely hot, your plumbing is probably set up with a trunk and branch system. What this means is all the water travels through the trunk and then narrows to individual branches that are diverted to each room. When one room calls for water, it can divert some of the water already in use (the shower), to the secondary water use (the toilet tank). Because the toilet is calling for cold water, the shower then has to share the cold water it was using. This results in too little cold water in your mixture for the shower and a blast of hot water until the toilet tank is filled.
To avoid having blasts of hot water in the shower, check out these solutions in order from the simplest to the most complex:
If you need help solving your plumbing issues, contact us at Crawford Mechanical Services. We can assess your existing plumbing and offer solutions that will put an end to your hot shower woes.