Hot Water Recirculating Pumps
Posted by easy eco blog
How much water do we waste waiting for hot water? We have seen figures estimating 10 gallons of water are wasted a day, waiting for the shower, tap, dishwasher etc. This cost money and is a total waste.
To get instant hot water you need to have a loop in the piping system that circulates hot water back to the water heater. Recirculating pump systems employs a temperature actuated by-pass valve that connects the cold and hot water supply lines at the fixture that is farthest away from the water heater. The system is designed to provide hot water at the most distant fixture and every fixture in series, or close to the main water line. The bypass valve uses the cold water line as the return loop back to the water heater.
Most pumps use electricity and have timers to set operation. Handy folks can install hot water recirculating pump systems themselves. Note that hard water causes problems for these systems.
Also be sure to put insulation on your hot water pipes.
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Filed under: Conservation, Eco Friendly, Effort, Energy, Green, Home, Medium, Reduce, Shopping, Waste, Water | Tags: Hot Water Recirculating Pumps
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2 Responses to “Hot Water Recirculating Pumps”
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December 30th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
These things waste an enormous amount of energy, as the insulation is rarely / never adequate. I recently saw a house which had a daily consumption of 8o KWH , and the very long hot water pipes were lightly insulated, and the entire thing was radiating heat- too hot to hold. -
completely crazy.
If saving water is the idea, just use smaller diameter hot water pipes- ie 16 mm.
Somebody elses experience-
The bottom line is that the recirculation system we inherited when we bought our current house has cost us about $3,200 in wasted propane use over the 8 years we have had the house!
If you have or are thinking about a recirculation system, I’d read carefully through all the material below — some of these systems are very very wasteful.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:20 am
Hot water recirculating pumps can waste a lot of energy especially if your choice is based on price or ease of installation. Those that have from what I’ve read on the internet regret it. First ask yourself what type of hot water lifestyle you want. Do you want hot water convenience that requires you push a button and then wait 30 seconds for the hot water to arrive at the sink? Or, do you want the convenience of hot water that’s ready at the sink during specific times of the day and doesn’t require pressing a button or activating a sensor of some kind. Hot water recirculators which are activated by pushing a button or activating a sensor are call on-demand hot water circulators. These use the least amount of energy but are also the least convenient since you do have to push a button and then still wait the 30+ seconds for hot water to arrive. There are 3 systems which I discovered in of this type. I’ll refer to them using only part of the name so you’ll have to do your research to find the one’s I’m referring too. The cheapest one is the C.P. Most of my research found that the ChiliP sounds like a blender crushing ice for mixed drinks when it’s operated. I discovered this when I came across a blog where a guy was trying to find a way of sound proofing one that he had installed in his home. Another blog refered to it as being so loud that their neighbors could hear it. That was enough for me to scratch that one off my list. The next one call the MetL d-mand system. After closer examination of their documentation I discovered that this systems pump stops when the sensor detects a 5 degree rise in ambient temperature. This means that if the room temperature is 72 degree’s then the pump will stop at 77 degree’s. Why they chose to limit the operations this way is still not understood. I figured if I’m gonna push a button and wait the 30 seconds I don’t want to be wasting any water down the drain and stopping the pump at such a low temp would have resulted in continued wasting and waiting, scratch it off my list. The next system with this type of operation was a RedyT hot water recirculator. It was the most expensive and bigger in size then the others I ran across. It did offer adjustable temperature control so the pump wouldn’t stop until the water was at a temperature I specified. Which meant that I could actually minimize my wait time for hot water at just the right temperature because I would have control of the temperature. It also used a phone jack to make installing multiple buttons throughout the home some what easy. But, I wasn’t sure if the whole family would embrace the having to push a button all the time.
I then looked into systems which use a timer to control when the pump would run and when hot water would be more conveniently ready at our homes faucets. Two of these systems are the same but with different names. One being a Grun comfort Sys and the other being a Watt comfort sys. These systems require a pump be installed on top of the water heater and then a thermostatic comfort valve gets installed under multiple sinks in the home. The pipe coming out of our water heater had been weld or swet connections so that wasn’t very appealing to me. But, more important was the fact that the valves which get installed under the sinks operate by closing at 95 degrees to prevent hot water from entering the cold water line. Which made sense but, reading more into it, revealed that the valves also remain open anytime 95 degree water is not contacting the valves to keep them closed. Because these valves are open as there default position it would allow water to siphon out of the hot water line whenever cold water was used. I sure didn’t want my water heater firing up whenever I flushed my toilet or used cold water. And, it made perfect sense why so many people were complaining that they couldn’t get cold water anymore fromt their taps. Since they were having to wait for the valve to close before they only got water from their cold water lines. It probably didn’t help their gas bills either. Scratched these off my list for obvious reasons. The next system was a Lain Autoc pump. It boasted about being a low flow, low power pump system. Their pumps impellars are balanced on a ball of sort instead of a stem type mounted impellar. I think a stem type impellar has more thrusting power to make the water move quicker down the pipes. These systems apparently do not work well when the pipes are imbedded in the foundation of the home or in cold climate area’s because of the low flow. I couldn’t believe the 1/200th horsepower of their pumps. The tiny print in their documentation stated that you’d have to periodically inspect the pumps internal parts for mineral or other buildup to maintain the pumps warranty. The last thing I want is to have to crawl under the sink periodically and tear the pump a part to check and make sure there’s no buildup occuring. A repeat look at another system called RedyT had the capabilities of also working by using a timer. It’s timer was different in that it has a digital timer that allows you to choose down to the minute when the system would make hot water ready. It also allowed the user to program weekends different from weekdays. They had so much info on their website that it was a bit confusing so I ended up calling them. Their systems use some type of dupont material which prevents any buildup of calcium or minerals. The system is also capable of operating in both timer and push button operation at the same time. So if the wife or I wanted hot water during an odd time of day we only needed to push the button to bypass the timer. The most favorable thing about the RedyT is that it uses a solenoid valve to prevent any siphoning of water from the hot water pipes during cold water use. Something check valves can’t accomplish since they only prevent flow from the cold line into the hot water pipes. Needless to say, we ended up getting the RedyT system and only regret not getting one years ago. Our gas bill has somehow remained about the same and that might be attributed to us using the push button method more than the timer. The convenience and time savings make our lives so much more efficient we’re more than happy to splurge using the timer on weekends. So there you have it. Hope this story long comment helps some of you out their become smarter shoppers on the internet.