Major Fail: Our Shower Had No Hot Water

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It’s been a while since I’ve had to write a grumpy post about a hotel. That’s because we weren’t staying in very many hotels and when we did, we were happy to be traveling. When we got back out, our major complaints were about how hotels weren’t offering housekeeping services or that the breakfast buffet was a grab-and-go bag of snacks.

When I’m staying at a hotel, there are five main things that I want. However, after a recent hotel stay, there was another thing I was going to add to the list.

Hot water.

I didn’t think I’d ever have to add this to the list of things I want, but when I’m staying at a hotel I don’t want to take a cold shower in the morning. But that’s exactly the experience we had at a recent hotel.

The room was very nice, including a large bathroom with a walk-in shower. The shower controls were on the opposite wall from the shower heads, which allowed you to turn on the water without getting wet.

Sharon was the first one in the shower and when she finished she warned me about the water temperature. We often have these talks about how the water will go from ice cold to scalding hot with a slight move of the controls (read: a warning to the next person using the shower) but this was different.

She said I might not want to take a shower because there was no hot water.

I’m not saying I didn’t believe her but how could a hotel have no hot water? I also wanted to take a shower and it meant taking a cold shower for a few minutes, so be it.

I went back to my youth, when I was camping and there was no hot water. It’s not an optimal situation but I’d rather be clean and cold than dirty and stinky.

I turned on the shower and the water was cold as she said. I turned the control all the way to the red dot and nothing happened. That’s when it hit me. Maybe the contractors mixed up the controls. I moved the dial to the blue dot and waited.

Hot water.

Either the pipes or the controller was installed backward and red meant cold and blue meant hot.

I finished my shower and told Sharon that the shower had hot water but the controls were backward. Her reaction was a mix of relief that we had hot water and disappointment that she took a cold shower because she hadn’t thought of turning the controls the other way.

Final Thoughts

I’ve posted several times about hotel showers. From controls you can’t understand or ones under the water, not having any lights, a curtain that blows on you when in the tub or a design that leaks on the floor, I’m convinced that the shower is one of the most important things in a hotel room. A good shower can make your stay while a lousy one can ruin it.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Off the top of my head, I can name five hotels we’ve stayed at with amazing showers and a few with ones that were horrible.

But not having any hot water (without advance notice) is a first. As it turned out, it was only a problem with the shower controls but does that make it any better?

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