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Recently purchased a house built in 2006. The shower gets colder as time passes and requires constant adjustment of the valve in order to maintain temperature. I replaced the cartridge in the valve with a brand new one, and the problem persists. What else could it be?

I have heard it can have something to do with hot water recirculating pumps as well, which I do have installed.

EDIT: I know I'm not running out of hot water because I can use the adjacent faucet right after the shower and get hot water.

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    I'm assuming that you have more than one shower. Does this problem exist for the other showers?
    – Michael
    Commented May 29, 2011 at 2:53

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Depending on the type of valves you have, it may be that the washers on the hot side are expanding as the warm water heats them, closing the valve slightly, and the reverse is happening on the cold side. If that's the case, and you don't want to live with it, then the only solution I can think of is to replace the type of valve to one that is explicitly designed to avoid this behavior.

If it happens more towards the end of the shower, rather than the beginning, then it may be that you're running out of hot water. The easy solution there is to turn up the temperature on the hot water tank so that you use less of it during your shower, and space out activities that use a lot of hot water.

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  • Yuck. :) I'm actually not running out of hot water, I've checked the faucet next to the shower after a shower and it's still got hot water.
    – snicker
    Commented May 28, 2011 at 21:54
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    To know for sure, you'd need to check the temperature of that hot water. If you started at 150F and ended at 130F, they'd both feel hot, but you'd need to adjust to keep the temp the same in the shower.
    – BMitch
    Commented May 28, 2011 at 22:28

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