I know a couple of people (not in The Villages) who have had them but wound up turning them off because they cost too much to run from the additional energy they use for the hot water heater. I do not believe they had it on a timer.

I think the major costs would be the constant reheating of the returning water. Any one have an idea what this costs for gas and electric hot water heaters.

I had looked into a recirculating system a few years ago. At that time I could not find a "system."
I like the idea of the remote. Should save heating the pipes all day.
It is also possible to put the pump under the sink, still needs wiring. Possibly using the garbage disposal outlet, if that makes sense. The other question is whether the homes are built with the pipes in "series" or parallel.

Found a company called Chilipepper.

They sell the pump and remotes together.

Great info ... thanks for passing it along!

Fred

Ok, if hot water is drawn out of the hot water tank and cold water replaces it wouldn't that cause the hot water heater to kick on more? A lot of home have gas hot water heaters. Don't know how many are all electric? IMO running the pump not the problem. When the water heater kicks on this would be the big energy use. Have they looked at the gas bill or electric bill to see what the increase is. IMO I need comparsion burning up one energy source to save another not really saving IMO unless the other source was minimal?

Go back a couples of pages in this thread. A link to a financial analysis has already been posted.

The pump pushes hot water through the "main" pipe. Your faucet maybe a few feet off this pipe so there will be a little cold water in that part of the pipe. May take a few seconds to get hot water as you have to empty out the water that is not circulating.

We tried the bucket approach when we first moved here, but it was too heavy for me to carry out to water the plants.

Based on the reviews on TOTV, my husband last weekend bought a Watts unit. He's an electrician and hates to waste electricity. He had talked to someone who said his electric bill went up significantly after installing the pump. So my husband put a switch on the wall just outside the shower. We turn the pump on before taking a shower and in 10-15 minutes have hot water. We ordered a Leviton timer from Amazon so that we won't forget to turn the switch off. So far, all is good!

Instant Hot water
 

We installed the Watts system last week--what a pleasure --instant hot water
we highly recommend
Eddie and Susan in Tamarind Grove

Like many folks, we discussed getting a recirculating pump to avoid the time and waste of having potable water drain out while waiting for hot water to 'finally arrive.

Being daring spendthrift's ( :-) ), we decided "...what-the-hell," and decided to have a pump installed. Good decision.

I debated buying/installing a pump from Home Depot to save $$. After remembering my experience 20/30 years ago hanging wallpaper and installing a water softener, I decided to have a 'pro do it. (Ok, I'll take it out of my allowance....)

Good decision #2. We called Tim Herndon Plumbing (352-201-8237). The total cost was $368 (with tax), installed. It took Tim and his helper about an hour to install of the Watts pump and master bathroom relay. I watched - but didn't get in the way (supervision & management has always been my strong suit).

I estimated the best times for the on/off cycles and programmed them into the dial-timer. After do that I realized that to get an accurate accessment of the pump electric costs, we would have to let it run continuously for a while. Ok...so I reprogrammed the timer to 24-hours a day. Expensive, I know, what what the heck ... we can readjust the house budget for the additional expense!

Then I hooked-up my nifty little "Kill A Watt" gizmo to see how much electricity the Watt recirculator took.

After running the pump 24-hours a day for two days, the Watt pump took 1.25KW. Let's see. At $0.11/KW it costs us $0.1375 for forty-eight hours, or about $25.09/year for the recirculator. I think the annual budget can handle that (but I'll have to check the speadsheet).

Now the only question is the additonal expense of (re)heating the circulated water - but my guess is that it'll cost than the wine consumed calculating all this.

Mary likes the fast hot water, and I certainly like not having to wait forever to get warm water for shaving, etc.

We should have done this a Long time ago.

Life in The Villages is Grand!

Best,
Casey&Mary

I have a Rinnai heating system in New Hampshire, which I intend to purchase for my home here. A bit expensive, but worth every penny. Endless and immediate hot water and it reduces your water heating bill. It's wonderful!

I like this guy! :) A common sense kind of guy.

Xavier ;)

Good post. You could cut your cost in half if you back out some night and day hours you do not need. For questionable times let it go 8n and off every 15 minutes.

We had the same problem when we moved here a little more than 3 years ago. We called the builder and was told that the master bath (where we had the problem) was a "long distance" from the hot water heater and that was the problem. Huh? Coming from an apartment in NYC where we never had the problem, it made no sense; however, I did have a hot water recirculating pump installed and the difference was at least 10 minutes. Even the builder had been surprised at how long it took the hot water to get to the bathroom. We wasted more water waiting for it to come in hot than we spent in the shower.