Hot Water Recirculation System? Replace it with a Demand System!

Many residential single family and multi-family homes built in the past have full time hot water recirculation pumps and systems installed. This no doubt saves a whole lot of water, but it also wastes a tremendous amount of energy.

Hot water recirculation

Recirculating systems were typically used in larger homes, say 3,000 square feet and up. Long pipes mean long waits, and if you could afford a big house you didn’t want to have to wait forever for the hot water to arrive.

Full time recirculation systems slowly circulate the hot water through the hot water piping keeping the water in the pipes hot for instant use. Turn on a faucet and within a second or two you have hot water. It’s a great convenience, but there is a penalty to pay.

Wasting energy

Your hot water plumbing becomes a giant heat exchanger causing your water heater to fire more often and longer. Not only does this waste a huge amount of energy, but it substantially increases the wear and tear on your water heater.

Even if you heavily insulate the pipes and put the recirc pump on a clock timer, you still end up spending a lot of money for that wasted energy. It’s not helping your carbon footprint either.

Hot water demand systems

A demand hot water system on the other hand will still save you thousands of gallons of water each year, and it won’t waste any energy. Demand pumping systems typically use about $1.00 per year in electricity to run the pump. This is because the pump only runs for a few seconds and only when you really want hot water.

With a demand system, you simply push a button when you want hot water, and that starts the pump. The pump sends the water to the fixture at a faster rate than if the faucet was just run. When the hot water reaches the fixture, the pump shuts off, and when you turn on the faucet you have instant hot water. No water was run down the drain.

Installation is easy. Simply remove the old pump and replace it with the demand pump. Buttons can be hard-wired from the points of use, or wireless switches can be used.

You will still save water, and you will save energy and extend the life of your water heater. Best of all you will feel good every time you use your hot water knowing that you are doing your part to reduce global warming!

A Water Heater and a Demand Pump - Instant Hot Water for Less Than $200

If you want instant hot water from your water heater when you turn on the faucet, then you want a demand pump. A hot water demand pump system is not the same as a recirculating or recirculation pumping system.

Recirc Pumps

Recirculation pumps, often referred to as “recirc pumps”, are for circulating a small flow of water through the piping system continuously to provide you with instant hot water when you turn on the spigot. Although you get instant hot water when you turn on the faucet, the system wastes a tremendous amount of energy since the hot water piping acts like a giant radiator. The water heater has to work much harder to replace all the lost heat and that costs you money. It also produces more green house gasses.

Demand Pumps

Demand pumps only pump hot water through the piping to your fixture when you “demand” it by pressing the pump’s start button. You won’t use any more energy than normal since you are only filling the pipe with hot water, just like you would if you turned on the tap and ran the water down the drain while you waited.

The pump typically runs for less than a minute, and thus uses very little energy of its own. The pump usually uses less than $2.00 per year in electricity.

Tankless Water Heaters

Although normal recirc pumps and recirculation systems will not work with tankless water heaters, demand pumps will, if they have enough power to turn on the heater. The Chilipepper pump has enough power to turn on any tankless water heater on the market. Others such as the Metlund D’mand System pumps have several models with different amounts of power, and some models will turn on some heaters. Be sure to check before you buy!

Tankless hot water heaters require more time to get the hot water to your fixtures since they have to heat the water first. Typically 10 to 20 seconds longer. That means you run more water down the drain waiting. With tankless hot water demand pumps are even more beneficial than with storage type water heaters.

A Green Plumbing Product

By installing a hot water demand system you not only get the convenience of fast hot water, you reduce your carbon footprint. It takes energy to pump and treat both the potable water in your residential plumbing, and the resulting sewage water from running it down the drain. By using less energy for pumping and treating the water, you release less pollution and green house gas into the atmosphere.
The Chilipepper hot water demand pump costs well under $200.00, and will pay for itself, often in a year or so.

Saving Water and Saving Energy - Human Behavior

Saving water and saving energy in a residential home setting, is largley a behavioural problem. If you observe how people use thier water for instance, you can spot wasteful behaviors all over the place.


Yard and lawn watering behaviors that don't save water

There are the obvious wasteful behaviours, such as watering the lawn at the wrong time of day, or over watering, and even watering the sidewalks and streets. The behavior in these cases is I guess, lazyness. All are easily corrected, but require someone to take the corrective action.


Low flow fixtures VS. behavior - To save water and energy

Once of the most often used water conservation methods or device is the low flow fixture. Low flow fixtures are a double edged sword. They can provide significant savings, and in turn can inadvertently cause a lot of waste.

For example, low-flow fixtures limit the maximum flow rate available from the fixture. This translates to lower water velocities through the pipe, and thus require a longer wait for hot water. However, a common reaction for those people who have very long pipe runs, is to turn on the hot water in the shower and go do something else while the shower gets hot. When they return, they often return to find hot water running down the drain.

Depending on how long the water ends up running before the human returns to use it, the savings in water is negatively impacted, and can even end up wasting more water than if the low flow fixture had not been used to begin with.

In the previous scenario energy is also being wasted. The cost of heating water is much higher than the cost of the water being heated. Running hot water down the drain is very expensive in terms of money savings... or loss!


Save Water - Behaviors in the Bathroom

Studies have shown that 80 percent of the time a typcal hot water draw occurs at a bathroom sink, the hot water doesn't make it all the way to the fixture. Most of us are guilty of this behavior... impatience... we turn on the hot water to wash our hands and we can't wait for the hot water so we start washing, only to finish about the time the water starts to warm up.

If you don't end up using the hot water, and all you've done is filled the pipe with hot water which will then cool off, then you have essentially wasted the energy. Better to not use the hot water faucet at all.

There are a whole lot of behaviors in the bathroom that can lead to wasting water, things like letting the water run while you brush your teeth, especially warm or hot water, running water whle you shave, lingering in the shower, etc.

The laundry room and saving water and energy

The obvious answer to saving water in the laundry room is to use the smallest load setting possible while still having enough to get the clothes clean. Using cold water instead of warm or hot saves energy as well.


Save water in the kitchen

The kitchen also suffers from human behavior caused water wastage. Single handeled faucets along with human habits are a contributor to energy wastage. If you don't swing the handle all the way to the left when drawing cold water, then you are drawing some hot water as well... a waste of energy.

Running the hot water to get your dishwasher really hot water is wastefull of water, running water to rinse dishes thouroughly, even hot water, when your dish washer doesn't need pre-rinsing, etc.

Save water and be energy efficient

There is one solution to several of these water saving problems... a demand hot water system of course. In the bathroom it will save energy and water by eliminating running water down the drain while you wait for hot water to arrive as discussed earlier.

In the kitchen it can eleminate the wasted water that you run to get hot for your dishwasher etc.

When you really do need hot water you get it more quickly and without wasting any water which saves you additional energy. It's the perfect companion for low flow fixtures!

All About Hot Water

Ok, this is my first official blog. I was hesitant to start a blog since I wasn't sure I could come up with something to blog about often enough to make it worthwhile, but I figured out what I could do if my brain was too slow.

Publish some of the more interesting emails we get from potential customers, and my response to them. We get all kinds of emails from people who don't understand one thing or another, and I have to assume a lot of them don't read either. If they did they would have found the information they were looking for right on the front page in many cases. LOL Go figure.

Hot water... the last frontier.

In a way hot water is like the final frontier. It seems like every other way to conserve energy and water has been covered many times over. Low flow everything from toilets to shower heads and high efficiencty appliances like dishwashers and washing machine are now common place.

Now maybe it's time to address the enourmous amount of wasted water and energy that could be saved from our hot water plumbing distribution systems. Todays large homes tend to have long and large diameter hot water piping which leads to a great deal of water being run down the drain, and heat energy slowly disspating from the pipes full of hot water sitting there cooling off.

Conservatively a demand hot water pump like the Chilipepper can save a typical family of four over 10,000 gallons of water per year. With over 50 million single family homes in the United States, if everyone had one of these systems we would save over 500,000,000,000 gallons of water per year. That doesn't count condos apartments and commercial uses if applicable.

It's very inexpensive and typically will pay for itself in a couple of years. In addition, the home owner gets his hot water faster which is always nice.

The demand pumps are easy to install and use very little electricity, usually less than $2.00 per year to operate. These systems even work with tankless water heaters, which is good since tankless water heaters take 10 to 20 seconds longer to get hot water to the fixture which means running more water down the drain.

Well, I think thats about it for my first blog post...

Bill the Hot Water Guy