I take it you don’t live alone, since you said ‘we’ got a water heater. I keep ours turned down a little, though not too much so the dishwasher gets it required almost 120 degrees. If you have other people living with you, and they want to shower after you, they will find it running cool sooner than they would like. One thing, though: You are definitely NOT saving any water. However you mix it, all the water in your house comes in the same pipe. If the pressure seems less it is because a lot of houses, like mine, have less pressure in the hot water pipes than in the cold because of sediment buildup. The best thing to do if you don’t need much hot water is to buy a smaller water heater. Many people have 50 gal tanks when they could easily use a 30 gal. Maybe you only need 20 in your case.
It takes a lot less gas to keep a smaller tank hot all day. Of course, now that you have a new one it will have to wait a bit. Now, here is a question for the audience: My fav cooking show man says to use hot water to cook pasta, so you don’t have to waste gas at the stove heating cold water. However, after seeing the crud that accumulates in the bottom of water heaters, I am not sure I want to drink that stuff. Any thoughts on that?

? no, i dont think so

Seeing as I have a new hot water tank as well as a water filtration system on the house, I’d have no problem cooking with hot water from the heater.

That being said, it probably balances itself out since regardless of if you heat it on the stove or in the tank, you’re still heating it.

You won’t save water, but, you’ll save gas on heating the water if it doesn’t need to maintain the temperature as high. Its possible you might save water with a higher water temperature since you might have to run less water to heat up the pipes before you step into your shower.

Most newer dishwashers have an electric heating element to bring the water up to 120F-140F if the supply temperature isn’t high enough. Not sure if heating the water another 5-10 degrees using electric is cheaper than heating it with gas in the water heater.

Cold water boils faster than Hot Water. Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.

oh, and the reason your pressure is less with hot water:

As a simple example, with warm water, you are mixing two pipes with 30psi each. As you go to mostly hot water and a little cold water, you are mixing 30psi with 5psi. With a flow restricting showerhead, you really shouldn’t notice that much difference anyhow.

In our city, the water is delivered at 70psi and there is talk to reduce that to 58psi which should save untold millions gallons of water. Largest complaint about our city water? 67% of the population believes the water comes out of the tap too warm — 65F.

Sparky, I must confess I am lost. Assuming you don’t have regulators, etc. the pressure in all the pipes of your house should be the same as it is where it first comes into your house. The water heater shouldn’t affect the pressure if it is working properly, either. So, where is the 5 PSI figure coming from? I thought mixing the water just varied the relative flow at the faucet. If there is less pressure in the hot water pipe at the shower, I have to think there is a partial blockage somewhere, and having 50 year old copper pipes myself, and having seen the insides, that was my first thought. PVC…I am not sure about.

P.S. I have heard the hot water freezing faster than cold bit before, and I tried it. It was true. The cold water boiling faster than hot is too much for me. I guess I will have to try it. I will experiment, using two batches of Spaghetti Carbonara and report on the results.

In some houses, there is a hot water knob and a cold water knob. In those you could potentially affect your pressure by turning both hot and cold on full, versus having each on half. In both cases, the mix would still be 50/50, but, you would have more pressure.

As the water mixture leans more towards 95% hot and 5% cold, you could get less pressure than if the higher hot water temperature allowed a 50/50 mix.

However, that was a bad assumption because newer faucets actually have a mix valve which wouldn’t allow the scenario I described.