Our hot water heater has a recirculator that is supposed to make the hot water come on almost instantly in our bathroom. We had our hot water heater replaced today. Now we have no hot water in our bathroom (it is barely tepid) but the hot out pipe at the heater itself is definately hot. The guys who replaced it said they thought the motor on the recirculator was shot. I don’t know if they did anything with it or not. There is an on/off valve on the recirculator which then connects to the cold in pipe to the heater. I wonder if somehow the hot water is somehow comingling with the cold. Can I turn off the recirculator or will that do something bad? I did push up the thermostat. It is not marked in degrees but I moved it between “hot” and “very hot”, which I figure will be about 130 degrees. The problem, of course, is that with Christmas coming, I know that no one will be here until Tuesday at the earliest. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Any chance they put the valve on the cold line in wrong and you are pumping hot water down the cold line back to the mains?
I typed up this whole big post, but let’s start with some basic troubleshooting.
Where is the motor?
Do you have hot water in other rooms?
there are two possable configurations of hot water recirculator.
a picture is worth 1000 words.
config #1 go here
http://www.thepurchaseadvantage.com/Merchant2/graphics/datasheets/GrundfosHWRTechandInstallSheet.pdf
config #2 go here
http://www.hvacquick.com/catalog_files/Metlund_DMAND_IOM.pdf
note neither config has valve from pump output to cold line could it possable be tempering control?
sure experiment all you want try all combos valves and pump power. only damage possable is if pump run dry long time. follow troubleshoot given in pdf’s
My guess without piping diagram is that the valve from pump output to cold line should be off cause when on you get warm water at fixture 1/2 coming from city cold and 1/2 from HW tank.
good luck.
oh by the way recirculator may save water but high enegy loss from piping radiation. why not save water and energy - go tankless.
or go free domestic hotwater with desuperheater or solar.
and get tax credit to defry install cost.
The pump is most like illustration 1. It is electric, not on a timer, and does not appear to be functioning. I never understood how the damn thing worked because I had never, and still have never seen the damn distal crossover point. It must be the shower or tub, it definately isn’t the sinks. Now that I turned it off, both by switch and shutting off the water flow valve that was between the pump and the cold water supply I do get hot water, but it seems to take alot longer than before. In otherwords, even though the guys who put in the tank said it didn’t seem to be working, evidently it was, and they either changed the piping; for instance, I know they told me I didn’t need the expansion tank, took that away, and put in some type of valve instead, or they just plain broke it somehow
when in doubt read the manual!
your welcome