In this ever-increasing green world we are living in, it is starting to seem more important than ever to conserve such a precious resource. Most of the time, a hot water recirculating system will cut the time you wait by at least 75%, and at least one faucet will be almost instant. This is because the recirculating system gets tied into the furthest possible point from your water heater (at a faucet), and returns back to the heater, creating a “loop”. Most times a pump isn’t even necessary. Convection is able to push the water through the loop on it’s own. If your installation does require a pump to work properly, you can even put it on a timer just like your Christmas lights. This way, you will not have a pump running while you are sleeping and no one is using hot water.
While it is true that a recirculating system will use slightly more energy (keeping the water warm, and keeping a pump running), it will not amount to much. Remember, you will be saving water. Also, if you wait for hot water at a particular faucet for a long time, to simply wash your hands, think about what you are doing. You drained your hot water line of all the cold water, filled it with hot water, to use about 4 cups to wash your hands. Now your water line is sitting there full of hot water, that is probably just going to cool down before you use it again. This process continually repeats itself, and each time may trigger your water heater to fire up, thus wasting energy.
If your water heater is 25 feet away from the faucet you want to use, you could be wasting over a 1/2 gallon of water every time you wait for hot water!
If you are tired of standing there at the shower, disrobed, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting…….STILL waiting, for the hot water to arrive, there is hope!