![\"pump](\"https:\/\/podfeet.com\/NosillaCast\/NC_2015\/NC_2015_06_07\/pump.png\")
<\/a>You MIGHT have heard that California is having a wee bit of a drought while many other places in the world are suffering with record rainfall. Until we figure out how to level things out across the globe (which will end up causing some other natural disasters I’m sure), we in California are looking for ways to save water. At my house one of the things that drives me bonkers is how long it takes for the water in our bathroom and kitchen to get hot. I hate seeing all that precious water literally go down the drain every day while waiting for hot\u00a0water!<\/p>\nMy brother Grant is really smart about stuff like this, and very environmentally conscious so I called him and told him to find me an easy, inexpensive solution to this that did NOT include me carrying buckets of water down the stairs to wash my clothes. While he’d heard about ways to circulate water around your entire plumbing system in your house, they involved replumbing much of the house so it didn’t meet my requirements of easy and cheap.
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\n![\"Grant](\"https:\/\/podfeet.com\/NosillaCast\/NC_2015\/NC_2015_06_07\/allison_grant.jpg\" "\\"Allison")
An hour later he called me back to tell me he thought he’d found the solution. He found these things called Hot Water Recirculation Pumps. It sounds like the same thing I just described but it’s a very clever solution that does NOT require replumbing the house. There are two parts to the solution: there’s the pump itself that gets connected to the hot water output of your water heater, and a small passive valve that you put under the farthest sink from the water heater. The valve is the clever bit.<\/p>\n
The valve goes between the hot and cold lines of your sink. It has a thermostat in it that measures the temperature of the water on the hot side. Let’s say you set the preferred starting temperature at 90\u00b0F. When the temperature goes below 90, the valve opens up, allowing hot water to be pushed by the pump from the hot side to the cold side. This is how it’s different from a full circulation system, which requires a loop on the hot water line. The pump will now push hot water towards your sink through the valve until the temperature is back up to 90 degrees, at which point the valve will close itself.<\/p>\n
There’s one downside to this and it’s that your cold water is sort of lukewarm now,\u00a0but in our house we don’t ask for cold water nearly as often as we want hot water, and cold comes from the source really quickly anyway.<\/p>\n