Hello! I have been having a hot water issue in my apartment, I will try to be thorough.

TLDR:
Water takes a long time to heat up.
Cools down quickly when not in use.
Is wildly inconsistent.
I need to have other faucets running in order to get hot water from some faucets (some faucets wont get hot water on their own.)



Background: I rent at an apartment. The water heater went out mid December. Management replaced water heater, but I noticed there was still an issue getting hot water after heater was replaced. I found out I am the farthest unit away from the hot water heater. And hot water can be wildly inconsistent. I think that the main issue is a lack of insulation for pipes and the distance the pipes are from the water heater.

Currently the main problem: If I run just the bathroom sink tap I cannot get hot water at all. Run time and temp most days.
60-70's F 5 min.
Low 90's F 10 min.
High 90's F 15-20 minutes.
Low 100's 30 minutes.
About 105 after 40 minutes where the water temp wont increase anymore despite however long I run the tap for. I've gone as long as 1 hour 40 minutes and it stays at 105.

If I run tests in my kitchen sink I can get 116 F or so after half hour to 40 minutes. But it is very inconsistent.

If I run my bathtub faucet I can get up to 120 (legal hot water in my state) after a long run time, maybe like 10-20 minutes or so, have not done a detailed timing with it. When I get hot water from my bathtub faucet it makes it so hot water can come out more quickly from my bathroom sink and from my kitchen sink. When I stop the flow of hot water, the water quickly cools down if I turn the faucet back on and takes time to heat up again.

When I send the water from the bathtub faucet up to the showerhead, it normally gets much cooler very quickly. Sometimes it only hovers around 100 degrees from the showerhead, even if I got it to 110 from the bathtub faucet.

The temperatures are strongly affected by neighboring units (I think). When they use hot water (I think heating up the pipes) I will get hot water much sooner in my unit. And, on a whole, the temps are wildly inconsistent.



What could be causing issues like the ones stated above?


Are long runtimes considered OK to access hot water? Even if I am wasting tons of water when I want and need to access hot water?

Sorry for a long post with a lot to it. Thank you so much anyone who reads my post and answers my questions or explains any possible reasons for why this is going on.

Thank you!



Edited 2 times.

i can think of half a dozen possible problems.
have you talked to other tenants?
have you talked management?

To add to Packy's question...How many apartment units served by water heater ?