Remodeling Your Bath or Kitchen? Add Instant Hot Water!

If you are planning a remodeling project, then you should think about adding a circulating pump or demand hot water system to your plans.  By adding a modern hot water distribution system you will get your hot water faster than usual, and you won’t run any water down the drain while you are waiting.  You will save time, water, energy, and money. Best of all, every time you use hot water you will feel good about doing your part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reducing your carbon footprint.

It takes energy to pump and treat your drinking water, and more pumping and treating of the sewage you generate.  Producing the pumping and treating energy results in greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution being released into our atmosphere.

Truly instant hot water requires a circulating system that pumps the hot water around a loop of piping from the outlet of the water heater to the fixtures and then back to the inlet of the water heater.  A pump circulates the water keeping it hot all of the time.  When you want hot water, it is right there only a second or two away.  This is very convenient for the user, but not environmentally friendly, and definitely not friendly to your wallet.  Keeping the piping full of heated water consumes a lot of energy, even if you heavily insulate the pipes.

A better solution is to pump the water at high speed from the water heater to the fixture, and then shut the pump off when hot water reaches the fixture.  That way you are not circulating heated water, and you are not running water down the drain.  You still have to wait for the hot water to reach the fixture, but since the pump does not have to force water through low flow fixtures like the faucets must do, it can get the water to you much faster than by just running the faucet.  Once the pump shuts off, then you have instant hot water.

Since the hot water is not being circulated, you don’t need a special hot water piping loop.  The cold water line connects to the inlet of the water heater, so by placing the pump at the last fixture, and connecting it between the hot and cold water lines, it forms a loop without the dedicated return line need with other systems.  The pump shuts off when the heated water arrives, so it doesn’t fill the cold water line with hot water.

Tankless water heaters won’t work with normal circulating systems since there is no ballast effect that a large tank full of hot water provides for a traditional circulating system. The tankless water heater would be constantly turning on and off, and using a traditional circulating system with a tankless water heater will void the warranty. However, they work just fine with demand type hot water systems.  The demand system only turns on the heater when someone demands hot water, and so it would have turned on anyway.

Turning on a tankless water heater requires about ½ gallon per minute or more of hot water flow, and not all demand system pumps have enough power to pump that much water. Be sure to check with the manufacturer to see if it will work with a tankless unit. Chilipepper Sales manufactures a demand system pump, the CP6000, which is the most powerful demand pump on the market, and will power up any tankless water heater.  It’s also the least expensive hot water demand system on the market at about $180.

Often times one demand pump can supply instant hot water to several or even all of the fixtures in a home, but usually due to the plumbing layout more than one pump would be needed to cover every fixture in a home. 

During your remodeling project make sure you add an electrical outlet where you are going to install the demand pump. That is about all you need besides the hot and cold water lines under the sink. 

By adding a fast hot water system to your remodeling project you might even end up with cleaner dishes.  Insufficiently hot water is the number one reason dishwashers perform poorly. If the water isn’t hot enough the detergent doesn’t dissolve completely.  The demand system will turn your project green.  Reduced energy usage, reduced water consumption, less sewage, and, a demand system typically uses less than $2.00 per year in electricity.

Go green and ad a hot water demand system to your list of home improvement remodeling projects today.