Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Christian Sager here. Have you ever been taking a shower,
Speaker 1: you know, gently scrubbing your body, maybe singing Boston's more
Speaker 1: than a feeling, when all of a sudden, the water
Speaker 1: becomes scalding hot, potentially burning your special downstairs area. I'm
Speaker 1: here to tell you that it's not just you. But
Speaker 1: before I teach you how to fix your plumbing so
Speaker 1: your shower no longer scorches your flesh, please allow me
Speaker 1: to first explain how the modern commode works. A common
Speaker 1: configuration of pipes in homes is what is called a
Speaker 1: trunk and branch system. It's like a tree with one
Speaker 1: large pipe, you know, the trunk that has several smaller
Speaker 1: pipes branching off to things like your sink, your laundry machine,
Speaker 1: your shower, or your toilet. If one of these pipe
Speaker 1: trees branches needs water, like, for instance, when you flush
Speaker 1: your toilet, there's less water available for the other branches
Speaker 1: on the tree. There are around three gallons of water
Speaker 1: in that tank on the back of your toilet, so
Speaker 1: when you pull the handle, it flushes all that water
Speaker 1: to send whatever you've disposed of down the sewer pipe.
Speaker 1: The tanks subsequently refills, taking water away from the other branches.
Speaker 1: And here's the important part. Your toilet only uses cold water.
Speaker 1: So the reason your shower gets hot is because the
Speaker 1: flush toilet takes away the cold water that was available
Speaker 1: in the system to mix together with the hot water
Speaker 1: coming out of your shower head. And if you're like Goldilocks,
Speaker 1: you probably like your shower not too hot and not
Speaker 1: too cold. But without cold water in the mix, all
Speaker 1: that is left is nuclear hot lava that will melt
Speaker 1: your epidermis off. And it's not just your toilet that
Speaker 1: can contribute to this problem. Any appliance using cold water
Speaker 1: can steal it from the shower, washing machines, sprinklers, even
Speaker 1: But dat's There are so are a ways to fix
Speaker 1: this water temperature problem, and I'm going to present you
Speaker 1: with a few. The simplest method is to adjust the
Speaker 1: valve under the toilet's tank. Most of the time, these
Speaker 1: can be tightened, so the toilet takes longer to fill.
Speaker 1: Unless you're the kind of person who is constantly discharging
Speaker 1: bodily waste, and you know that's probably something you need
Speaker 1: to have looked at. You probably don't need the tank
Speaker 1: to be primed immediately. This will take less cold water
Speaker 1: away from the shower. A similar simple solution is to
Speaker 1: place an object like a brick or I don't know,
Speaker 1: a human skull inside the tank so it doesn't use
Speaker 1: three gallons every time you flush. There are more complex
Speaker 1: plumbing fixes available as well, like increasing your trunk's pipe diameter,
Speaker 1: installing a new mixing valve, or renovating the whole system.
Speaker 1: But all of those are going to cost you cash money,
Speaker 1: and let's face it, if you wanted to spend that,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be listening to a podcast for home repair answers.
Speaker 1: So bing bang boom, There's how your toilet works, why
Speaker 1: flushing it makes shower hut, and hey, a few ways
Speaker 1: you can fix it. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and for more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com