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Hot water recirculating pump

5 years ago

Tell me about recirc pumps, please. We had one in California, where water conservation was a must. But I'm here in PA now, and it takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r. to get hot water for my shower in the morning. Someone said it's a waste of energy to put in a pump, and water is cheap. But I have to run the water for 5-10 minutes in the morning. Should I put in a recirc system?

Featured Answer

PRO

User

5 years ago

last modified: 5 years ago

10 minutes is quite extreme. 10 minutes is a very badly designed system. You may need to consider a whole home repiping if it’s such a tangled ancient spaghetti mess. A recirculating pump isn’t the answer to that.

Evaluate your entire supply piping system from the source. A recirculating system that operates on an overly long, uninsulated piping system, will cost you quite a bit of money. It would be better to spend that money on a direct PEX supply from just after the water heater, and insulation of the rest of the pipes. That would resolve the immediate issue. But if the rest of the piping system remains a spaghetti mess, it needs addressing as well.

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Comments (8)

salex
5 years ago
I can't tell you about recirc pumps, but I can tell you that there might be other options to get hot water faster, depending on your situation. Where do your pipes run - through a crawl space? What are they made of (galvanized, copper, PEX)? We had galvanized pipes in our crawl space. We replaced them with PE, and adding insulation, and it did wonders for how fast hot water arrives at the tap.
sushipup1
Original Author
5 years ago
I think a recirc pump may be a lot cheaper. True?
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It's confusing to follow your plumbing explanation. I have a similar set-up and I have one circulator attached to the garage boiler and it circulates to the basement boiler. No storage tanks involved. To circulate properly, you can have no air in the system and at least 12# of pressure. Mine runs on 12#. What is the brand of this unit?
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kachinee Check out this link http://www.lainginc.com/. If you click on Recirc Pumps, there is a document on how they work. I also bought mine at www.HVACquick.com/Laing and they have documents on their site for how to hook them up with various configs. The issue is not the tank - it is the plumbing pipes. There is a lot of water sitting in the feeder lines and it can take minutes for the hot water to push the cold water out of the way. I had a similar problem but I have tankess water generators. We put the tankless units under the master suite (yes finally - hot showers instantly) BUT the kitchen, utility room sink, butler pantry sink AND the feed to the second floor all run to the other side of the house 88 feet away! The first time I put ther hot water on in the kitchen sink it took 5 minutes for hot water to flow. DW said "unaccepatble" and so began my first project on the new home - and we hadn't even moved in yet! I ran a 1/2 inch return loop from my hot water genertators all the way to the other side of the house, and teed in just prior to where all the braches go. I insulated the main feeder and the return loop, used a 4 gallon hot water tank, and the Laing pump. It now takes 10 to 15 seconds to get hot water instead of 5 minutes - DW is happy. If you use Laing - make sure you get the pump that has the check valve integrated into the pump assembly. That will reduce the number of parts you need. ALso - the smallest Laing pump is rated for I think a 250 foot total loop, so you have to pick the right size pump for the loop design you have. Good Luck! ps - I do not work for Laing. I am just a Joe Blow homeowner who saved his bacon when the DW turned on the hot water faucet and COLD came out.
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greg_2015
5 years ago
5-10 minutes?!? Have you actually measured the time or are you just saying what it feels like?

That is an extremely long time. Unless you have a sprawling mansion and the water heater is in the west wing and the bathroom is in the east wing.
User
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
A recirculating pump on something that takes 10 minutes and isn’t insulated can easily cost you $40 a month in wasted heated water. Even if you had it on a motion detector or timer, 10 minutes is far too extreme to make that work.

That’s a really poorly piped house unless your water heater is 500 feet away. If that is the case, you need a second or third water heater for each wing of the house.
User
5 years ago
My brother has a recirculating pump on a timer.
Nancy in Mich
5 years ago
We had one added to our modest home an it has been wonderful! The water is warm in just seconds. Our full bathroom is on the opposite end of the house from the water heater, so it did take a few minutes to get warm water. It is about forty feet. We have a switch on the pump and can turn it off, but have not bothered. What with all our lights being LED now, I guess we feel that this one luxury is worth whatever the cost is (which we have never measured).
User
5 years ago
We have a similar run...water heater to master bath is about 100+ feet, out of the attic, under the slab and back up. Running the shower it takes about a minute to warm up, running a tap it takes 2 minutes (the Delta faucets now all seem to have the plastic supply line of narrower dimensions) to get the shower almost instant hot. How do i know, I turn the tap on hot while my Sonicare electric toothbrust makes me brush for 2 minutes...and at that point, the water is going through warm toward hot.

Recirculation on that circuit would be a messy job and likely quite inefficent.

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