I had a 9-inch immersion heater in my tank, with a 7-inch thermostat which had tripped, reset it, and tripped again, so set to around 50ºC, and it seemed to work OK, but on my to-do list.
So swapped the thermostat, and it worked for a time, but a terminal overheated, maybe I had not done it up tight enough, or the screw had a stray wire as no ferals were used, but 9 inches were too short anyway, so got a plumber to fit a 27-inch version, and the hot water is so much better.
This seems strange, why should we seem to get hot water to taps faster? I now question the whole idea of a 9-inch, 3 kW immersion heater, if the 27-inch is 3 kW then the 9-inch should be 1 kW to get the same water movement within the tank. Maybe having a senior moment? But it just seems 3 kW with such a short immersion is asking for problems.
I said to plumber likely like that from new, answer was no, it came out too easy, and then he found the original 27 inch clearly failed under the tank, so I wonder why a 9-inch one was fitted?