Voices of tenants in public housing are seldom heard when our cities are being planned, designed and built by other stakeholders with more power and resources to decide, act on and influence our common future. Still, resource use changes in everyday life of citizens in affluent countries have been pointed out as important ingredients in reaching sustainability goals. This paper presents research anticipating to raise the voices of tenants in the question of how water is used in public rental housing, with focus on hot tap water. The research project explored practices related to hot water flows and water materialities, such as socio-technical relations between tenants and bathroom artefacts. First, tenants met in focus groups to discuss hot water use in their homes. The discussions in the focus groups were facilitated by one researcher and one artist. The artist then took some of the themes from the focus groups to explore further. Some artefacts became important, both in the stories told by tenants and in the ideas about creating a public exhibition based on the tenants’ stories. The exhibition combined actual artefacts, placed in a river, with stories told by tenants and was on display in the summer of 2016.