Question: After 10 years of putting up with the hot water in our Cantigny model home, we are finally going to do something about it, I hope. As you may know the master bedroom and bath is the furthest room from the hot water tank. It takes nearly 60 seconds for us to get hot water to our M.B. sinks. My wife would desperately like to fix this problem. Now she sometimes turns on the tub faucet but even that takes 15 seconds and wastes a lot of water.
Answer: The reason that you get cold water for from one to four minutes is that all of the water in the pipes between your sink and the water heater has to run through the faucet before the heated water from the tank comes through. In my house, the faucet in the laundry room produces hot water in 10 seconds because the water heater is directly below this sink in the basement. The faucet in the master bathroom takes three minutes to run hot because it is on the opposite end of the house from the water heater.
On demand or tankless water heaters do not solve this problem because they still need to push all the cold water sitting in the supply line out before the hot water comes through. In fact, since they don’t have a tank of heated water, the fix in the system described below can’t be used with it.
There are several technologies that do solve the problem. One is a return loop of copper tubing that keeps hot water at your furthest sink. Another is a system that places a pump under the sink at the farthest fixture to sense when water in the supply line is too cool and pumps it down the cold water line to the water heater tank thus drawing heated water to the fixture that is farthest away from the water heater.
The best system for existing houses, like those in Sun City, is one that has a temperature-controlled bypass valve under the farthest sink and a pump that can be conveniently located adjacent to the water heater. This system has a timer on the pump so you can set it to only run at the times you might need hot water. The timer can be set to go on and off at 15 minute intervals, depending upon when you feel you need hot water at the fixtures.
The pump is equipped with an extension cord that can be plugged into a convenience outlet near the pump so an electrician is not needed to wire it in place. There is no water waste with this pump and it also minimizes energy waste since it only sends hot water into the water supply lines during the programmed times.
Most plumbers have experience installing this system and can give you a quote to install one in your house.
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