How Can You Heat Up Bath Water to Room Temperature?

Bathing is one of the most relaxing activities one can do in their own home and is also one of our oldest traditions as humans. However, many people have trouble heating up their bathwater, or perhaps keeping it warm, and they just can’t seem to find a solution. In this article, I will be going through some tips on how to warm the water for your bath so you can enjoy it more and for a longer period of time, and also how you can heat up your bath water to room temperature, or even hotter!

To heat up bath water to room temperature you can use built-in gas or electric heating systems as well as portable bath heaters.

If you are interested in finding out more about how to warm up your bath water in the most efficient ways, this article is meant for you. We will go through some basic techniques, and also a couple of extra tips if you want your bath to stay warm for longer. Read on for more!

How Can You Heat Up Bath Water to Room Temperature?

So, in order to talk about heating your tub to even hotter temperatures, we might just start by talking about room temperature and the things you can do to keep it at that. There is actually more to this than meets the eye!

First, if you want to heat water to any degree, you will need some form of heat. This is a basic law of physics (and also of common sense), that you cannot just generate heat out of nowhere. You need to put some sort of energy, say that be electric, or from gas heaters, or even a fire. Whatever it is, a heat source is definitely needed, without it, you won’t heat your tub. 

For this purpose, you have things like electric heaters, either immersion heaters or the ones you can install in your home which make the water warm in the first place, but if you take showers and have a home, presumably you also have that. This article is aimed at explaining the other factors that could contribute to warming bathwater. 

After figuring out the exact heater you want to be working with, you aren’t actually done yet. There are some very important aspects to keeping the water warm once it is, and most of these aren’t the first thing that comes to a person’s mind. 

One of them is the material of the tub. Different materials will keep the heat of the water of the tub differently. For example, porcelain-enameled steel, one of the most common options, doesn’t really keep heat well, since it is often bought due to it being inexpensive, and thus when installing, the extra step of putting foam on the bottom often isn’t done either. 

There are another couple of materials tubs can be made of which are not really good at keeping heat, but porcelain-enameled steel is probably the most notorious offender on this front. 

If you are looking for a material that has great heat retention, you should be looking at things like cast iron, cultured marble, granite, some forms of fiberglass, or other materials. 

Also, the insulation on the bottom side of the bathtub is also an important factor. If you cannot afford or don’t want a tub with high heat-retention, you can still make your tub just that much resistant to heat-loss by applying different types of insulating foam. This can help even thinner and lower-quality tubs increase their heat-retention and can help you out without having to break the bank for it. 

Another way to keep the water hot or warm for a longer amount of time is to preheat it. Of course, this doesn’t mean putting a fire underneath it like with preheating a pan. It can actually be done by placing much hotter water in the tub than what you desire to take a bath in. YOu can do this by boiling a huge pot of water, or bringing it near a boil, and then pouring it into the tub and letting it sit in there for a couple of minutes so the heat gets transferred into the tub. Then, as you open the drain, you can at the same time pour in the water you want to take a bath in, and adjust the temperature accordingly. 

The reason it isn’t better to let the water drain completely and then draw the water is that it will empty the tub, and in those seconds or minutes, many tubs will lose a significant amount of heat. 

The next great way you can increase water warmth (or at least keep it at a temperature for longer is – surprise – a bubble bath!

If putting foam (bubbles) on the bottom of your tub can help with heat isolation, so can putting bubbles on the surface of the water. Most people wouldn’t believe at first that the bubbles of a bubble bath serve any purpose apart from being fun, but it can actually work as a layer of insulation (and a pretty good one) between the surface of the water (where most of the water evaporates) and the air. 

However, for this, you will need to get a high-quality bubble bath. Just pouring in your shoer gel won’t do it, because even though it might bubble up at first, most commercial shower gels are not meant to stay bubbly for too long and the bubbles will dissipate over the span of a couple of minutes. Invest in a higher quality bubble bath gel or powder which will bubble up a lot more, and will also stay that way for longer. 

How Can I Heat Water Without Gas or Electricity? 

In certain scenarios, you might need to heat water to a certain extent even without the use of electricity or gas, which is a very hard thing to do but might be necessary in the case of a power outlet. In this case, aside from building a fire underneath your tub, there aren’t any accessible ways to make water hot or even warm. What you can do, is try to warm it up to near room- or body temperature. 

One of the ways you can do this is by investing in some bath stones. Most of these are made of basalt, which is amazing at holding and slowly radiating heat. You could try placing the stones in the water after leaving them on the Sun all day or warming them up in some other way. 

Aside from placing some warm material into the water, there aren’t many realistic options for heating up water, so investing in some stones could help you out in an unfortunate situation. 

Bath Stones That Keep Water Warm

Whenever stumbling across a picture of some spa or hotel, you will most likely see hot stones. These black, basalt stones retain a lot of heat very easily and are used for many different purposes, mostly within the massage and wellness sphere. However, that isn’t the only use they can have. 

Since these stones can retain a lot of heat, you can actually use them to keep your bathwater warm for a longer period of time. In the case of a power outlet, you might need to find some other way of warming these stones up, such as placing them in direct sunlight for some time (depending on the amount of sunlight available in your area), but otherwise, they are quite easy to heat up and use. Just make sure you don’t microwave them, or if you do so then you do it carefully since they can get too hot or even explode. 

Here are some basalt stones from Amazon that you can check out if you are interested in purchasing them for yourself: 

Sivan Health and Fitness 8-Piece Large Black Basalt Hot Stone Set

A great 8-piece option, also an Amazon’s Choice product!

Zabrina 4 Pcs Large Massage Stone Large Hot Basalt Stone

– Another Amazon’s Choice product but made of a humble set of 4 stones, even slightly larger than the previous ones. 

Portable Bathtub Heater

To conclude, it is useful to mention the portable bathtub heaters on the market. Most often, these are immersion-heaters, which work with electricity in most cases. These are also a great option for heating larger amounts of water, however, they cannot be used in the absence of electric energy. 

They are usually very high-capacity heaters, and they can easily heat up bathtubs and other smaller amounts of water quickly, so if you need some portable heating power, make sure you check out the following portable heater from Amazon!

It is affordable, highly effective, and also really useful to have at home. There are also three different versions available, so you can get the one which is the best for your needs!