Q: We live in a three-story house and need to run the water for a minute in the upstairs bathrooms before it gets warm. Do the recirculating pumps I've heard about work well?
A: Recirculating pumps -- which move hot water throughout your home's plumbing via a pump so it's available at the sink when you need it -- make so much sense that some municipalities require new homes to be equipped with them. This is to prevent the waste of gallons of cold water that must drain out of the hot-water pipe before the hot water from the tank reaches the bath faucet. The farther the faucet is from the water heater, the more water will be wasted.
There are some trade-offs to using a recirculating pump, though they are relatively minor. The pump uses additional electricity. And unless you have your system on a timer so the hot water is circulating only when you're likely to use it, the pump will be on continuously, and the water heater will have to work overtime heating up the water as it cools off in the pipes. If it runs 24 hours a day, it will shorten the life of your water heater. The solution is to use a timer, perhaps set to run the pump mornings and evenings.
In the past, separate pumps were needed at each faucet. But the new systems require only one pump, which is installed at the faucet farthest from the water heater. Recirculating pumps cost $200-$300 and cost $100-$200 to install, depending on whether a new electrical box must be installed as well.
