Reply To: Hot water temperature recommendations

[Scott Willis]

Hi Michael,
We need to be particularly careful around temperature for very young children and the elderly, who are more at risk from burning from hot water than the rest who can usually tell if the water coming out of the tap is very hot. 5 degrees hotter that 55 degrees isn’t big, and I wouldn’t worry about it. At our house (with teenagers) we work to get much hotter water from the tap because we love very hot showers and because our hot water is heated by wetback and solar, so we have plenty.

So I’d say – assess who is in the house, and what risk they are at, and how well they appreciate the risk. Getting a plumber in to try to get it to an even 55 degrees at the tap is going to be costly – because it is very hard to calculate % of heat loss between the cylinder and the tap – and that can easily change with improved lagging, etc. So only recommend a plumber if really necessary.

I’d be interested in what others think about this..

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