Inventing the Metlund D’MAND system –
An Invention Success Story
The Metlund D’MAND system, how it was invented, developed, and marketed.
Back in the late 1980’s my partner Dennis Metzger and myself (William Lund), were marketing an energy saving device for water
heaters. We attended trade shows trying to market our energy saving
device. The device, a Hot Water Recovery System could save homeowners a large percentage of their water heating bill.
We called our company Metlund Enterprises, which came from a combination of Metzger and Lund, our last names.
Save me time, not energy.
We found that people were just not interested in saving
energy at the time. The most often question asked of us was; does it get my hot
water faster? We found that most of the people we talked to wanted faster hot
water.
The Metlund hot water demand system is conceived.
Later Dennis and I were driving to a PUC meeting in San
Francisco from our office in Stockton, California. It was on that drive that I
had my epiphany…there was a way to get people their hot water faster! Why not
pump it to them at high speed and shut the pump off when the hot water arrived
at the fixture? That was the moment of conception for the Metlund D’MAND system!
Development begins.
As soon as we got back Dennis and I began developing the
idea. At first we thought a return line would be needed as with hot water
circulating systems, but we soon realized that we could use the cold water line
as the return as long as we shut the pump off quickly enough.
We further found that since it takes time for heat to
transfer from the water to the temperature sensing device and it takes time for
the device to respond, sensing a final temperature always ended up with hot
water in the cold water pipe. But by shutting the pump off when a temperature
increase was detected, we could shut the pump off without getting hot water in
the cold pipes, and the hot water would be 2 or 3 seconds away.
We ended up using a Taco Inc, hot water circulating pump, an electric water valve in series with the pump, and an electronic circuit to
control the pump and the valve. A temperature sensor also was strapped to the
hot water pipe for sensing the temperature. The Metlund demand system still uses
a Taco pump and an electric valve to this day.
With this arrangement we could pump the water quickly to
the fixture, and no water would be run down the drain. It was a great product,
if a bit expensive. Circulating pumps and motorized ball valves are not cheap.
Our company was a tiny little two man
operation. Needless to say marketing a new product with no money is difficult.
We ended up licensing it to ACT, assigning the patents to ACT, and giving them the name Metlund.
The product is now known as
ACT Metlund D'MAND system. Dennis and I are no longer affiliated with the company.
Here is an article where I compare the two systems:
Metlund VS. Chilipepper
It was one of those cases where the two naïve inventors
meet the new company’s lawyers and the next thing we know we are out on our
behinds with nothing to show for it…but that’s another story.
The Chilipepper hot water demand system comes to life.
A few years later we decided to take another look at the
problem addressed by the original Metlund D’mand system. Metlund hadn’t
improved the system in years, and still hasn’t.
After taking a fresh look at the problem we came up with
some pretty good new ideas, and we decided we would call our new pump the
Chilipepper!
Instead of using a hot water circulating pump which has
very little power, we decided to build our own pump from scratch, and design it
specifically for the application. We used modern injection molding technology
and used a far more powerful motor.
The result was a dramatically reduced retail price, size,
and weight and a significant improvement in performance. Since we had a much
more powerful pump we could hook the pump up with hoses instead of having to use
full ½ piping connections as with the original system. This makes it far easier
to install under a sink.
We feel we are doing our part in bringing water conservation to the masses,
even though most people who purchase hot water demand systems such as the
Chilipepper CP6000 or the
Metlund D’MAND
system are doing so for the convenience
of faster hot water. We know they are really practicing water
conservation, and we feel good about that.
Chilipepper
Sales 10 Greg St., # 110 Sparks Nevada, 89431
PH (775)-359-1223
