I’m sick to death of waiting for several minutes for the water to get hot enough to wash my hands! A few minutes is a long time when your hands are covered in chicken juice. And it’s an eternity to my toddler! Also, it seems like such a waste to just let the water run and run and run down the drain.
So, on Google I see a mysterious device called a Lobster. Then there are some other whole house instant hot water thingies, and really I have no idea which would be good and which would be bad.
Basically, I want hot water available at every tap in my house as quickly as possible, but I don’t want something that will cause a disastrous leak in my plumbing or something I have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on.
So what are your experiences with such devices? Is there any type or brand I should seek out or avoid? I appreciate the help!
The Lobster appears to recirculate water until it’s hot enough which won’t do what you want as far as getting hot water faster. Your options are basically two, insulate your pipes if you can get to them or install on-demand water heaters at the locations you want hot water immediately. That or rigging up a hand washing sink at the water heater.
Only if you install a tankless heater right next to each of your faucets. If not–if the water has to travel 50 or 100 feet to a faucet–it won’t solve the problem.
They have a device for that exact problem, it’s a small pump that connects between the hot and cold taps. when the hot water gets cool the pump swtiches on pumping the warm water into the cold water line until the hot water reaches the device. It runs automatically.
Another simular device allows you to push a button right before you turn on the water, which runs a simular pump as above, after a set time the pump turns off. When the pump turns off the hot water is there already - this one I think is more for water savings, but I think the pump pumps faster then you can let the water run out.
As for wanting it at every faucet, normaly you can get away with installing such a device at the furthest faucet as the hot water has to pass all the other points to get to it.
Here’s what I notice about the Lobster. It claims to work by circulating the hot water in your pipes back through the cold water lines, therefore always keeping the hot water pipes hot. The hotter the pipes are, the more quickly they will lose heat, it’s a simple matter of the delta T between the pipes and the environment.
Next, it puts the returning hot water into the cold water pipes, warming the cold water. Most people like the cold water cold. I’m also not sure about using returned hot water for cooking and drinking purposes, it’s possible to pick up some undesirable substances that have settle out in the tank.
If it works as described it would save water, but I don’t see it saving electricity (or gas, or whatever you use to keep water hot).
here is one such circulating pump
Depending on how your house is plumbed, one of these may not be enough. In y house the hot water pipe Ts when it comes out of the water heater. One leg goes to the bathrooms the other the kitchen. There is no way short of a repipe that one unit would allow me to have hot water at all my hot water faucets.
I hadn’t priced point-of-use tankless heaters in a while, so I took the lazy way and clicked on the ad a the bottom of the page. That company’s under-the-sink heaters are $175 each. I have a feeling they may be stouter than what you’d need for your bathroom sink, so maybe that’s high.
These things don’t run at all until you turn on the tap, then you get hot water right away.
If you were starting from scratch, building a new house, you could spring for a thermosiphon loop (essentially a second set of hot water pipes, one below the other.) When the hot water cools, it drops into the lower return pipe, so you always have hot water at the tap.
You really ought to talk to a plumber to see what is wrong with your hot water system. Because this is not normal or proper operation.
Waiting a few seconds, possibly up to a minute for hot water is real common – but “several minutes” is not, and indicates something is wrong with your plumbing.
It might be as simple as flushing & replacing parts in your hot water heater, or it could involve major repairs. But once you know what the problem is, you can decide what & when to do something about it.
Most plumbers will do an evaluation for a pretty reasonable price, and may credit that against the bill if you hire them to fix it.
It may just indicate a poor design rather than anything actually wrong. If the bathroom is far from the water heater, and someone put in 3/4" pipe to make sure it was big enough, and the faucet has low flow, it could take a while to flush all the cooled water out of the hot water pipe.
As for the devices that links were provided for, they address Bill Door’s concerns thusly…
And yes, all these devices would increase energy use. But by such a small fraction that most people wouldn’t notice it when they are so happy about their instant hot water! I would have put one in but didn’t want that valve thing showing beneath the pedastal sink.
My house has a circulating pump on the water heaters. Hot water comes out of one (50 gallon) heater, into the “cold” water input on the other identical heater, then the hot water gets distributed to the house. But here’s the difference - there is a return pipe that brings back the water through the heaters (it goes into the “drain” connector of the first heater). Hot water is always circulating through my house’s pipes, even when no water is coming out of the taps. When I turn on my shower, at the other end of the house from the heaters, I have instant hot water.
This may help depending on the layout of your house.
I haven’t looked in a while, but you used to be able to buy electrical heating tapes for pipes. Their intended use was to keep pipes that run through unheated spaces from freezing.
If you have a basement the pipes may be accessible and you may be able to apply the tapes to exposed hot-water pipes. Even under ideal circumstances this won’t immediately deliver max-temp water, but it could be better than what you’ve got.
Again depening on how your place is laid out this may not work - second floor faucets, pipes not accessible in basement, etc. etc.
On the bright side if your layout works, installing these tapes could be a lot easier than anything that requires playing with the plumbing. It may even be a do-it-yourself project.
Sure it will. But you will only have hot water on the branch that has the connector between the hot and cold faucets.
Secondly the cold water line is is the returen to the HWH.
Now you have to run the cold water to get rid of the ‘returning’ HW. :rolleyes:
Well mostly they would, but in some cases it can save energy. I have seen one device that you press a button before you want your hot water, the pump then turns in and circulates the water into the hot water line into the cold water line - I think this happens faster then letting the water run. The energy savings is if you have a well, and the deeper the more you will save as you will not have to run the well pump (and waste the water) to get hot water to the faucet. Also very useful in places with a low capacity well.
MOre than likely, it is the location of the water heater in correlation to that tap. Ours is, by chance, directly beneath our kitchen and we get instant hot water. Upstairs, it is a good 2-3 minutes before the hot water kicks in.
I would think the water circulator thingie would cause the electric bill to rise. I don’t know what would be better: a higher water bill or a higher electric bill.
I don’t think this is as big a problem as you do. Here is a slightly different unit that goes under the sink and has a thermostat set at 85 or so, it is adjustable. If I need to wash my hands having 85 degree water coming out of the tap is not a problem to me. Beats the hell out of 40 degree water. The only downside to this unit is you need a plug under the sink (or nearby) and it will only work on a single branch.