Hot water for sinks/shower
We just moved into a 3 story 2.5 bath brownstone. The hot water takes about 30 seconds to reach the shower and even longer for the smaller faucets (b/c the pipe has to empty of cold water before the heater water gets there). I feel like we’re wasting water every morning and would like to…
We just moved into a 3 story 2.5 bath brownstone. The hot water takes about 30 seconds to reach the shower and even longer for the smaller faucets (b/c the pipe has to empty of cold water before the heater water gets there). I feel like we’re wasting water every morning and would like to have the convenience of quick hot water for the shower. I’ve looked at “comfort pumps” which use the cold water line as a return line and keep recirculating hot water from the heater, but noticed most are designed for long houses and not high ones. I talked specifically with a person at a plumbing supply store and he said the max “head” for the pump is about 30 feet, close to which the pump can’t handle the water. My question is: has anyone had these installed without getting a specific hot water return line. If so, which model (we heard grundfos is the best). Any recommendations from a plumber would be helpful as to what the options are for a tall house (3 stories) and not wanting to tear apart the walls to put a return line in.
Does everyone else just wait for the hot water? I’m assuming this is common on all the older building with dated plumbing.
Ah, I see. So the minor difference is that the chillipepper never wastes energy since you have to turn it on explicitly with a switch (j: nothing hi-tech there) but the Grundfos will restart and refill the hot riser from time to time if its timer is on?
Again, you don’t need much flow for recirculation, justinm.
I’m sure you don’t need anything other than the smallest Grundfos, which I think is the UP-15 series.
Seriously, don’t over think this.
These things are made to work in the application you’re describing.
Master Plumber… am I right to assume that the smallest grunfos will probably work with my house? Is there a significant possibility that it won’t?
CMU — Master plumber is right the grundfos can either run on an aquastat or a timer or both, effectively only doing it during waking hours and only enough to heat the line.
I’ve heard there are other activation options, such as a motion sensor, but I don’t want to get that high-tech…
Cmu, many units, such as the Grundfos mentioned earlier, have a built-in aquastat that do pretty much the same thing as the description on the Chilipepper unit: shut the pump down on temperature rise.
True recirculation does waste energy…I thought you were considering a gizmo that dumps water from the hot to cold lines only when you push a button to require it.
This is a pump easily plumbed in (you could almost do it yourself) which runs as long as the hot water line has cold water, then stops. Now, you still have to wait, but you’re wasting no water nor energy.
The cheapest one is Chilipepper (abt 200); looks toy-ish but has gotten good reviews; somewhat noisy; remote control for II bathroom.
http://www.chilipepperapp.com/howit.htm
Lemme ask a stupid question here… why not install a thermostatic shower head? That won’t help with the faucets but it may with the shower. Not sure what it takes to install one tho.
Ok. I get it. So the only think causing “head” is the difference in pressure in the cold/hot systems plus any resistance on the lines in the way of bends and t’s.
I think this answers my question… Since it’s only a 2.5 bathroom I’ll do the smallest model and return it if it doesn’t work.
Has nobody else done this before? It gives instant hot water and it just a retrofit of existing systems…
What this means is that regardless of where a pump is in a closed system, the head pressure remains constant. It doesn’t matter where the valve or pump are installed.
I’ve never been a fan of dumping hot water into a cold water line, but even I realize that that’s just old-school thinking. There’s really nothing wrong with it, especially if you’re using a newer, cleaner method of making hot water.
By the way, for comparison’s sake, a pump in an open system, say a sump pump or a fire truck, has to grab water from some source and lift it through an open ended conduit where it is ejected from the system.
This is called a positive displacement pump.
In heating systems and in this application, the pumps are not capable of “lifting” water at all. They don’t have to. They just influence the flow of water through a circle. That’s why we call them circulators. They’re not really pumps at all.
Back to the topic at hand (not alternatives, as ridiculous as they may or may not be)… Master plvmber, what does this mean for a system that has a valve at the topmost bathroom that allows water from the hot water line to go one-way into the cold water line, effectively using that as the return line? (this is for systems with a pump on the hot water line on top of the water heater). (the question was about head pressure, which in this case I believe is equal to the height of the house — I’m probably wrong though).