In addition to Tim's explanation you may want to watch those below: I also had such a return line in my house to fix the problem. The price to be paid for having instant hot water everywhere is, of course, a higher electricity consumption. So you'd need to make a choice. The principle of a return line is explained lucidly here in this video. The interesting bit begins at 00:56. Just skip the beginning. All lines should be insulated for the whole thing to make sense. A pump can be installed easily as is shown here.
No, Shirley...30 seconds is not long. It took just 30 seconds for the 16 B-25 Mitchell Bombers from the carrier USS Hornet to fly over and bomb Tokyo, once the city was reached. This was on April 18, 1942, and was our first retaliatory punch at the Japs since Pearl Harbor! This was called the "Doolittle Raid" or the "Tokyo Raid". See the movie "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo"! Hal
BUT WAIT A MINUTE... I was looking at our Water Heater, and noticed there are 2 heavily insulated pipes entering the top of the tank, and one copper pipe running from the bottom of the tank, through a Recirculating Pump, and into the house. The Pump has had its power cord cut off from the plug, so all I would have to do is splice on a new piece of power cord with a plug! So it looks like the house came with a recirculating hot water system, and I never knew it in the 20 years we've lived in it! (pretty dramatic, huh?) Hal
@Hal Pollner Let's investigate why the two pipes entering the tank on top are insulated. First, one of them brings in the "street water". The other takes the heated water into distribution within the building. So, to reinstall recirculation, the pump output must be connected to the household hot water piping. Is it? Likely not, unles a valve is present, and it's closed. Hot water migrates to the top of the tank, naturally. Therefore, you don't want cold fresh water entering near the top. One of those top connections has an internal pipe stretching downward inside the tank, nearly to the bottom. Electric water heaters having two, 240-volt elements almost always use 4,000 watt elements, too much current for the average household 240 line. Plus, the problem of migration of hot water within the tank is partly mitigated by having a set of two thermostats, one for each element, each having a set of contacts arranged such that when power is called for initially, only the bottom element is energized. When the bottom thermostat reaches shut-off temperature, power is automatically directed to the top element, which continues to provide heated water until either demand stops, or demand exceeds ability to maintain temperature at which time the bottom element takes over, as the heater struggles to meet the excessive demand. It took me quite awhile to figure out how the above works. Mostly led by the fact that the labels all state "4000 watts", despite the fact that 8000 watts of heating ability are present, though not engaged simultaneously. What a fish-fry! Gas water heaters MIGHT do a better, quicker job, but gas has disadvantages, not the least of which is safety consideration requiring the burner to be vented to the outside. No vents on electric. But, but, ........your gas stove in the kitchen, having just as large a burner as a gas water heater, is NOT vented anywhere but to your kitchen........Say what?? Frank
Exactly what I have except I only have 3 bathroom sinks. The bathroom in the hall has only one sink where the bathroom in my master bedroom suite has 2....I only use one though.
I need to see if I get this right. People complaining about not being able to get hot water fast enough who probably had to wait until mom put the water on the stove to get some when they were kids. And which is also probable that if it was bath night, had to wait until dad and the rest of the siblings had a bath before getting one and then the water was dirty and cold. And more probable, had to cut the wood and load the stove when mom felt like heating the water for bath night that you wouldn’t get any of anyway. And the absolute truth is that when we were kids, taking a dip in a dirty and cold pond was far more pleasurable than taking a bath even if we had a chance at the hot stuff. Life for our generation is truly one of a “from the rags of forced patience to the riches of impatience” kind of a story is it not? Could it be that those wrinkles didn’t come with age; they came from impatience coupled with too many instant hot water showers?
Not in my case @Bobby Cole ...always had almost the same things we do now but of course less modern maybe. Not bragging or anything but in the time I grew up that was the normal...in Pittsburgh anyway.
Well we didnt have a dryer though and had a wringer washer now that I'm thinking about my childhood but I never even saw coal...regular heat, hot water, toilet..actually 2 in our first house ..one downstairs and one upstairs. Our first house that I remember in 1955 was a two story red brick in a nice neighborhood with a huge yard. Think it cost $17,000.
Oh, I can’t say we didn’t have conveniences when I was a wee lad. Just 20 feet from the outhouse, grandpa put a water trough just for washing our hands and face before going back into the house. It got pretty hot too but that was only during the summer.
We bought our first house in 1948. It cost $4500, but we bought the vacant lot next door for another $1000. It was an all-frame house on a corner lot. It was a large-looking house, but inside it had just 2 large bedrooms, one bathroom, a large living room, a formal dining room, and a kitchen. It also had a small building on the property that contained a bedroom and a workshop. That's it... Hal
I have one of these mounted on a wall next to my shower. 3 seconds and wala! It's connected to the kitchen sink, which is ~20' away. Takes about 6 seconds to get there. (1/2" PVC) With 2 people using it daily, a 20# grill propane cylinder lasts for almost 4 months. (No laundry washer) It's not vented to the outside and I ain't dead yet. The BTU rating is less than a standard propane oven with a couple of burners on. They say it will kill you but it's crap. Had friends over here while baking a turkey and 3 burners on and no one died.. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077K428L...8e33-852c7c6c15b5&ie=UTF8&qid=1527818591&sr=3
I really like them! Very reliable and easy to hookup. The igniter uses 2 - "D" cell batteries and last for over a year. Perfect match to my 12 volt RV pump.. .