Installing a 3 gallon heater ca?----

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BSA_Bob

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Ijust had it in my head that i was wasting water,the waiting isn't bothering me to the point i will not wait!! for hot water. Its the thought of maybe spending thousands of dollars down the road redrilling my well, Although my well is one of the deepest on my block-so to speak bob s

Maybe i'll just pass on this "hotter " issue./i have been here 20 years and have not noticed any slow downs yet in my water pressure. What do you think??
 

Dana

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It's fairly simple math to figure out how many gallons you'd be wasting on a first-draw at the remote tap using the diameter of the plumbing and the distance from the HW heater. On subsequent draws it's a matter of how much of the abandoned heat remains in the distribution plumbing. Compared to what you'd waste with a leaking or old-school high volume toilet it's probably pretty minimal. With 3/4" plumbing is about a gallon or so for every 50' of pipe, with half-inch it's a gallon for every hundred feet, as a very rough order of magnitude. If it's primarily the water savings you're after, do a bucket-test on your shower flow (or just replace the shower heads with a super-sipping 1.5gpm type) and swap out any 3-5 gallon flushers remaining in your toilet fleet for a noo-skool 1.6 gallon version.

More than well-failure issues, water conservation has a bigger impact on septic systems, where excess volume/dilution tends to reduce function and shorten lifespan.
 

Jadnashua

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Most faucets are flow-restricted, so even with a half-gallon, it could take 20-30 seconds to get warm there, and a little longer to warm up the pipe so you can achieve full hot. Something like a vanity faucet may be restricted to in the order of 1.5gpm. Personally, with my recirculation system, it only warms the cold line part way back to the WH. If I flush a toilet, that purges essentially all of the warm water in the line, and restores it to as cold as it gets. A dedicated return line keeps the cold line always cold, but in my situation, it's not an issue. So, with a retrofit unit, most of the issues can be managed. And, they do make demand switches, so that the thing only runs when you need it, or timiers that can be set to choose a time of day you want hot quicker.
 

Dana

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Yabbut Jim, he doesn't really care about the wait, or even the energy use- it's about the wasted water. If he's flushing the toilet to purge of the tepid water his primary goal has been defeated (with prejudice!).

There are better trees to bark up than the wait for hot water, since we're probably talking less than 3 gallons/day of waste here. That's about the difference in between a 5 gallon vs. a 1.6 gallon toilet in a single flush, and an order of magnitude smaller than 10 minutes of 4gpm vs. 1.5gpm showering.
 
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