Home renovations are often born out of necessity.

This industrial worker found himself in need of a separate place to clean his dirty work clothes after a shift, per his wife’s request.

After finishing off the job, what was meant to be his private shower turned out to be a hot commodity for the rest of his family.

With the help of a coworker, he engineered a smart solution to ensure he was able to enjoy his hard work.

Read on for the whole story!

Use all the hot water? Fine, I’ll just shut it off…

This happened to my coworker who has since retired. We work at an iron foundry and it can be a very dirty place.

Coworker lived about three blocks from work and didn’t like using the communal shower in the locker room.

He lived in a 1950s ranch style home with his wife and adult daughter.

Space was cramped, to say the least.

In the typical fashion of a mid-century home, there was only one bathroom in the house.

His wife would often complain about the bathroom being messy after he took his shower after work.

Luckily, he quickly thought of a solution.

The house has an unfinished basement, so coworker decided to build a second bathroom in one corner of it.

This would allow him to get home from the foundry he could discard his dirty clothes and shower without tracking a mess through the house.

Upon asking for input, it was clear this was his own personal project to manage.

He asked his wife and daughter for input into the design, but they showed no interest.

Well, coworker set to work, and with a little help from some friends, finished his new bathroom in about 3 weeks time.

It turned out beautifully.

The room turned out very nice. It had a toilet, large laundry style sink, and was adorned with white subway tiles.

The showcase was the spacious shower stall with a high flow shower head so there was plenty of pressure to wash away all the dust and dirt from a hard day at work.

Coworker was very happy, but only for a short time.

Soon, his family started encroaching on his private sanctuary.

It turns out his wife and daughter both worked second shift and had taken to using his new shower just before they left for work and when coworker would get home, there wouldn’t be any hot water.

He put up with this for about a week before we got to work on a solution.

Luckily, they were more than up for the task.

I should mention that we both worked in industrial automation and couldn’t wait to come up with a clever solution to this issue.

After about a day of tinkering, we came up with an off delay timer tied to a solenoid valve.

They detail their plan.

Coworker had a 3/4 inch line that went from the water heater directly to the new shower.

He initially did this so there’d be plenty of pressure, but it also worked out so that whatever we did to the shower wouldn’t affect anything else in the house.

And carefully calculate each step.

We put the solenoid valve just before the shower valve and wired it to the timer which we wired in parallel with the exhaust fan in the bathroom.

So, when you turned on the exhaust fan to take a shower, the valve would turn on to feed hot water, but the timer was running.

We set the timer for just shy of 10 minutes. Coworker was bald and insisted that it was all the time he needed to get his shower done.

Their plot worked like a charm.

He came home the next day to find plenty of hot water, as well as a note from his wife saying there was something wrong with the water heater and he should fix it.

After only two days, his wife and daughter were back to using the upstairs bathroom before work.

Harmony is restored!

What did Reddit think?

10-minute shower? Try a 45-second shower.

Kids these days can’t even use hot water without being tracked!

No need to time your showers when the apartment management is footing the bill.

This redditor has to hand it to them for the cost effectiveness of their plan.

This creative fix ensured this father could enjoy the hot showers he had worked for.

This story showed you can engineer your way out of almost anything.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.