this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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It's reasonably common for showers to have a mixing valve and a flow rate valve on separate handles. That accomplishes what you want. You just have to remember which is which and only use the flow rate valve to turn on and off.
More importantly, hot water circulation systems should be more common. It's the waiting for the cold water in the line to flush out that really makes setting temperature a hassle.
That just sounds like a waste of energy. Why not have the water heater right next to your shower, so that there's no wait? It's how it was set up in my parents home. Really enjoyed that setup, never had to wait for hot water.
Because the kitchen isn't always wall to wall with the bathroom?
That's still confusing to me. My parents had the water heater tank in the bathroom, between the shower/bath and the sink. The kitchen sink had a separate small water heater.
Most houses in the US have a single water heater, usually in the basement or utility room, with pipes running all through the house.
I once had a place with the separate small water heater for kitchen. Could barely get the dishes done. I prefer having to wait a minute for the bathroom gigantic tank water to make it to the kitchen. Actually my system is way more complex, but that's irrelevant for this discussion. I have 3 big tanks, two of which are powered by wood (so usually cold unless it's cold outside and I make fires). By turning some valves on or off I can get water from different tanks to different faucets, though not all combinations are possible. Perks of a 40 year old house that grandpa later made more improvements on, lol
It's really a question of whether you have electric heating or a furnace or district heating.
It's not common to have more than one heat exchanger for hot water if you have a furnace or district heating.
Electrical is much easier. You can just place them anywhere and they don't cost as much to install. However, electricity is usually more expensive than district heating.
On demand recirculating works reasonably well but only for people who tolerate it. Push button, wait 3 min, water hot. It works for me but I know it’s way too much trouble for other people. It saves water and energy.
If you have a consistent schedule, you can also use timers for those so you don’t always need to remember to run it.
Oh, yeah, that makes much more sense actually. Now I kinda want that setup, but I bet it's expensive.
The basic recirculation system is less than $300. Controlling the pump is the only thing you would have to add.
The pump comes with a built-in timer so you could turn the pump off while you sleep but that is not very granular.
A $15 relay plug will handle it no problem. How you control that relay plug is a rabbit hole- you can use the normie apps and their cloud servers crawling your local network but you get voice commands and remote control with very little effort. Or you can set up home assistant and have the pump run every time you turn on the bathroom lights, and when you unplug your phone from overnight charging, and when your phone connects to the house Wi-Fi upon arrival home from work.
I'm irritated by these half-measures. Just bathe in the hot water heater!
Actually, fuck yeah. My parents also have one of those bad boys:
It's really nice to bathe in!
As a kid, I saw an old movie with one of these in action. A dude and a lady were victims about to be eaten with the soup, and had to move around in it swishing the liquid and tipping the pot. Good stuff...
I assume electric showers are pretty rare over there? We’d have like a 16mm2 cable ran to the bathroom for a 10.5kW shower. And with one of those it’s practically instant heat, and enough to heat high flow.
I've never seen one. We've got on-demand water heaters that feed entire homes, but the electric versions are notorious for breaking a lot. The trend is toward heat pump hot water storage tanks that cool the air around them and put that heat into the water tank.
Thanks for info, good to learn.
I prefer a water shower, thanks
I've seen some videos about those, my understanding is that they're used in warmer climates where the cold water line is already relatively warm year round.
Depending on your location the wasted water from letting the faucet run can be much more valuable than the energy needed to maintain a circ system, however install cost is high and the lines need to be entirely insulated so really, new construction works best. I wanted it on my house but I think it'd just drive costs way up, especially with a tankless as it'd be firing all the damn time.
and when the hot water heater is two floors down and the pipe from there runs up unheated parts of the building, it takes a very long time to get even a hint of warmth out of the hot water faucets.
i've lived 3 minutes away from hot water for nearly thirty years now. it sucks. if i ever get money enough to own a house, or choose where i live with little regard to cost, it will have instant hot water (tankless water heaters).
I thought a hot water circulator would be great, and it kind of is, but it comes with a drawback that I hadn’t considered. If you want cold water from the tap, to fill a glass of water at night for example, you have to wait for that just as long as you would have had to for the hot water before!
The solution to that is for a third return line to be run during a new build or remodel, but that's definitely not a weekend project for most homes.