Water temperature

I've brewed about 5 batches of all-grain and always seem to come up short. I'm not sure if I'm just not adding enough in the beginning. I have been measuring it at room temp.

At what temperature should you measure your water for your mash? (mash temp or room temp).
I also want to mark my brew kettle, should it be marked hot or cold?

I do use Beersmith and know what my boil off, dead space and all that is I just think maybe I'm starting off wrong.
I know some may think this is a dumb question but I'm just trying to figure things out. 

What is your water to grain ratio?

I measure all volumes at the temp it is normally performed at.  Mash volume at mash temp, kettle at just under boiling, etc.  But hot or cold should only make a 4% difference at most.  You didn't say how far off you were for volume, you may want to re-examine your losses to equipment.  I spent 1 day brewing water only when I set up and recorded everything at every step.  Also verify your dipsticks or graduations, or however you measure at every step.

Boil off rate is going to be different for every brewer. Your set up is unique. It will take a number of batches to dial in the exact amount of water to start with. Then winter will come and everything gets thrown off. Keep records and adjust as you go. I keep a supply of distiller water on hand to top up the primary fermenter in case I come up short. The real tragedy is when it won't all fit in and I have to dump it. I finally decided to err on the side of having about a half gallon extra which I save in the fridge to use for priming or making a starter.
 

Thanks for the replies I'm pretty sure I'm the one screwing it all up just don't know where.

I use 1.50qt/grain. My last batch was almost 3/4 gallon short. I marked my kettle for my mash runoff at mash temp 154.
My boil kettle is a 1/2 barrel keg
This is my equipment profile.
Mash tun 10 gal cooler
Tun deadspace is 0.38 gal and adjust mash vol for deadspace
auto calc boil vol
boil vol 5.96 gal
boiloff/60 min 0.50 gal
post boil vol 5.46 gal
4% shrinkage--cooling loss 0.22 gal
trub loss 0.25 gal
batch vol 5.0 gal
fermenter loss 0.50 gal
4.50 gal to bottle

Fill your boil kettle with water, boil for 60 minutes, measure pre and post volumes, .50 gallons  is pretty light for boil off. Make sure you do your measurements at the same temp. 

Thanks ihikeut I'll do that this weekend see if it changes anything.

The volume of water expansion from 80 F to 212F is 4.3%. So if you are dealing with 5 gal of water and heat it from 80 F to boiling it would be - 5 X 1.04 = 5.2 gal.

This should give you some idea of expected water expansion from room temp to boil. The curve is not linear.

I think your boil off rate is wrong too. I boil off roughly 2 gallons per hour.  Your boil off rate will change the humidity too, high humidity lower boil off rate, low humidity higher boil off rate.  How do you have your boil off set, is it a fixed amount or a percentage per hour?  What is your grain adsorption set at?

I, as well boil off over two gallons per batch, plus cooling loss.

In short, to make 5 gallons beer, I  set out to make 6 gallons to account for losses and shortcomings. 

Thats a 6 gallon batch in a 10 gallon pot.  I can see a big 1/2 barrel boil kettle boiling off even more for a  5.25 gallon batch.
I start with 43 liters water . after mashing and sparging  if there is any water left I add it to the boil kettle. My batch size is 6 us gallons , preboil volume 8.76 us gallons, and 23 liters end up in the fermentor after trub loss and adding 3/4 liter reclaimed yeast slurry.  .

I keg 19 liters and bottle usually 6 - 500 ml poly bottles. one liter is lost to yeast, 750 ml of which is  added to the next batch so not lost really.
Check out my tomsbier pilsner , and other recipes on the beersmith cloud.  recipes yield 22 to 23 liters .