Recirculating Pumps

Have you ever turned on you shower and had to stand there for a few minutes and wait for the water to get hot? Have you ever wondered what happens to the 2-3 gallons of water that run down that drain? That is actually money down the drain! If you consider the average home that takes four showers per day that can add up to thousands of gallons per year! That is a lot of money.

The reason why this happens is because in a typical plumbing of a home, water is plumbed from the water heater through the pipes to the tap. Once the tap is shut off, the water remaining in the pipes cools down, and this is the reason why you have to wait for the hot water to come in. A recirculating pump can help eliminate this problem. It can be installed in a new home or even retrofitted in an existing home. This is called a retrofit-by-pass. This system uses the cold water supply line as the return line to the water heater. A circulator pump is used to create a pressure differential that allows the cold and cool water in the hot water supply line to "by-pass" (at low volume) into the cold supply line through a patented thermostatically controlled valve that is mounted under the sink furthest from the water heater.

The Grundfos HWR (hot water heater) pumps solution is to constantly circulate hot water through the pipes form the heater to the furthest fixture. Therefore the water in the pipes is always hot and no water is wasted during the wait. Our clients who have them are delighted that they no longer have to wait for the hot water!

A recirculating pump helps keep our water from being depleted, which is especially important in Florida, where there are water restrictions. Hot water recirculation is a cost-effective method of controlling any additional waste of water. Everyone wants to help our environment in some way!

In Florida, the average household consumes 85,822 gallons of water per year at an annual cost of $214.14*. With new housing starts estimated to reach 130,774 per year by 2000, annual water consumption by new houses alone will total more than 11 billion gallons at a cost of nearly $28 million per year. Were all new houses built in Florida to include a Grundfos hot water recirculation system (with an average 200 foot supply line), water saved would total 16,534** gallons per year per household. The corresponding annual water bill would be reduced by more than $40 and the energy bill by approximately $83. In total, hot water recirculation could save the state of Florida more than 2 billion gallons of water per year and save new homeowners more than $5 million in annual water charges.

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