I am typically the first one in my house to take a shower and I like hot showers. I have noticed that if I take a shower first, the hot water is not that hot and doesn’t last very long. But if others take showers before me and the hot water has to recharge then the hot water is HOT and lasts a long time.
I have a 50 gallon hot water tank.
The only two things I have (besides sinks and showers) that use hot water are a dumb dishwasher and a dumb washing machine.
What I was thinking was to set up an automation in HA to somehow trigger something to use hot water for like 10 minutes in order to get the hot water heater to recharge.
Any ideas?
Is it a gas or electric water heater?
If it’s electric you can add a tank temp sensor (to outside of tank) and a high current relay to bypass the lower thermostat and turn on the heater on command. When your sensor indicates the tank is at the desired temp you can turn off the bypass.
You might be able to do something similar on a gas water heater, but I don’t know enough about them to say.