Best Home Improvements – Instant Hot Water for Your Kitchen and Bathrooms

Best Home Improvements – Instant Hot Water for Your Kitchen and Bathrooms

If your home is like most, you have some fairly long hot water pipes and so you have to stand at the sink or the shower and wait for the hot water to arrive.  While you wait you are running all that water down the drain. There is however, a home improvement product that will address this problem.  In my opinion one of the best home improvements you can make. It's called a hot water demand system. It speeds the hot water from your water heater to your fixture without running water down the drain. It is also inexpensive and easy to install.

Hot Water Demand Systems

Hot water demand systems are pumping systems that mount under your sink, usually the one furthest from the water heater. When you desire hot water you push the start button, and the pump begins pumping the hot water from the water heater to your fixture more rapidly than just running the faucet.

The cooled-off hot water left in the hot water line since the last time someone used hot water, is sent back to the water heater through the cold water pipes.  When hot water reaches the pump it shuts off and no hot water gets into the cold water piping.  When you turn on your hot water tap you have nearly instant hot water.

In many cases other fixtures share the same hot water main trunk line, and those fixtures will benefit with faster hot water as well. If your house has its plumbing done in a daisy chain fashion, then a hot water demand system at the last fixture will provide fast hot water for all of your fixtures.  Once the demand system gets hot water to the pump under the sink, the shower at that location will have hot water in typically 5 or 6 seconds after you turn it on after the demand system completes its cycle.

Tankless Hot Water Heaters

Most tankless water heaters are not compatible with hot water circulating systems and the warranty will be invalid if you do use one.  Tankless water heaters are not designed to turn on and off frequently as happens when a hot water circulating pump is being used. Another problem is that most hot water circulating systems don't produce enough flow to turn on the tankless water heater. Tankless heaters usually need from 1/2 to 3/4 gallons per minute of flow to turn on and stay on.

Some demand systems suffer from the same problem, not enough power. Demand systems do not affect the water heater the way a circulating system does since it only turns on when you actually use hot water.  They won't void the warranty of the tankless heaters.

Tankless water heaters require longer waiting times for hot water since they have to heat the water from scratch unlike storage water heaters.  This makes demand systems even more important when you have a tankless water heater.

Solar Powered Water Heaters

Solar powered water heaters work great with hot water demand systems. Any kind of solar water heater will work with a hot water demand system.  If you have a solar hot water heater for your home then you certainly should have a hot water demand system adding water conservation to all that free heating energy. Water savings is just as important as energy savings and perhaps even more important.

Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

With a hot water demand system you will save lots of water and often energy too, and in doing so you will reduce your carbon footprint.  Reducing the amount of water run down the drain reduces the amount of sewage that must be processed and treated. That saves more money and further reduces your carbon footprint.  If you have a septic system it reduces the load on your system saving you potential septic system problems.

I think this is one of the best home improvement choices one can make considering it provides you with the convenience of fast hot water, saves thousands of gallons of water, reduces your carbon footprint, and it's inexpensive and easy to install.

Hot water demand systems can be found online for less than $200 and no permanent plumbing modifications are necessary since they can be hooked up with common supply hoses.  This is not the case with all hot water demand systems, so check to be sure.

Start saving today, go green, and install a hot water demand system in your home.