My mother has a 50 gallon gas water heater with a recirculater. There are only two people living in the house and yet they both can not even take a five minute shower and befor the hot water is gone.
I tried draining the tank and only goot clear cold water. It seems like the cold water is running directly into the line that the recirc. pump is conected to. That connection is the drain valve and the bottom of the tank. Also, doesn't the hot water leave the tank at the top? Why is the recirc. pump connected to the drain? thanks

Reason for the circulation to be at the bottom of the tank is hot water rises thus you want the hot water near the outlet and the tempered water to enter near the bottom with the refill water would go down the tube.

The reson to have not enough hot water could be

1- defective tube on the cold water side

2- No provisions for the prevention of stratification of hot into cold

3- Piped in wrong

4- Temperature needs to be raised Aqua stat

Thank you for the info on the pump. I can see how that works now. This is not a new house and they have not had this trouble for the whole time. They do get hot water but it runs out in about 10 minutes or so. The heater is turned up to a very high temp. and the gas pilot is on. The burner go on and off just fine and the hot water the do get is HOT.
Thanks again for your time and help.

If everything is working and the water heater does not maintain enough H/W possibly because of the age the bottom of the tank has a lot of sediment robbing you of heat.

Possibly time to replace this with a rapid recovery model

another thing it could be (already mentioned)is the cold water dip tube.