am I in hot water?

Well, it turns out my wife is right...I probably should turn up the temperature on the water heater.

She's been telling me this for a few years now, and I've kind of been ignoring her because it seems fine to me (and I don't want to pay any more than I have to for electricity.

But then (and here's my mistake) I started wondering if she actually might be right about this. I'm 5'10" and she's 5'3". Assuming that we both stand in the water stream at about the same level, the stream has to travel much farther before it reaches her.

Is it possible that the water is significantly cooler by then?

I taped a ruler to the shower head and built this state of the art temperature testing rig to find out. (Before you ask, yes, it is an oral thermometer glued to a children's beach toy with adhesive putty.)

I started measuring temperature at the shower head and took readings at 1" increments and here's the result:

• I'm nice and comfortable at 102 degrees
• She's standing in a lukewarm 96 degree stream

So there you go...my wife was right and there's scientific evidence to support it.

Lame.

I'm not one to give up that easily however, I think there was some error in my experimental methods. I mean come on...an oral thermometer? How accurate are those things anyway?

I really don't want turn up the water heater and I want to admit that I'm wrong even less. Instead of doing either of those things I have commissioned an in-depth CFD analysis to disprove my quick-and-dirty findings. I'll post an update with the results.