No longer waiting 3 minutes for hot water. Woohoo!

Erin Holohan Haskell

We've got a small brick colonial home that was built in 1947. The mechanical room is in the basement and the attic on the third floor was converted into a guest room with bath. It usually takes about three minutes for warm water to reach the third floor (and just a little less than that for the second floor), so we would stand at the faucet every day, wasting water and time.

We installed B&G's ecocirc wireless instant hot water system back in 2013. It worked at first, but then it stopped working after a few months. We replaced it with a new ecocirc and tried again with the help of some very kind reps, but it never really worked as it should, even after a hydronic retrofit. It was also very noisy. We could hear it on the second floor.

So we thought we'd try something else. Yesterday, Brian Golden of Foley Mechanical installed Taco's Hot-LinkPlus hot-water recirculation system. He said it was a snap to install. And I am amazed at how quickly the hot water now reaches the third floor. I checked on it first thing this morning and (after a cold start) warm water arrived before I could even hit my stopwatch. I can also put it in smart mode and it will learn our hot-water usage patterns and make our home even more efficient. I'm impressed!

Erin Holohan Haskell

@Hatterasguy, there's a pulse mode and a smart mode. On pulse mode, the circulator will run for 150 seconds every 10 minutes. Since I have it in smart mode, it's going to run in pulse mode for 7 days and monitor and record our water usage this week. Next week, it will perform based on the data it gathered this week. So it will be trained to run more when we need hot water most (typically in the morning for showers).

Sure. I can check back in and comment on how it's doing in a few months. So far so good, though. What made me thrilled enough to brag about it was when I went up there and it laughed at my stopwatch. We've never had instant warm water like that up there.

I think I can determine if it learns my usage patterns if we continue to have instant hot water when we need it and I'll see if it's running when we don't need it. And I'm sure we'll see a difference in our water bills too.

hot_rod

Glad you are in hot water!

Any idea what the failure was on the Eco? Did the pump seize up? Or a control glitz?

I think the Eco is a re-badged Laing, magnetic drive pump, they are usually completely silent, unless hard water conditions plug them up?

Erin Holohan Haskell

Thanks, @hot rod.

Not sure exactly what the failure was with the ecocirc. After the first pump didn't work out, the folks at Xylem said the pump may have been a little short of producing the flow rate necessary to deliver instant hot water to the third floor. They sent us a larger pump.

After installation of the second pump, warm water arrived on the third floor within 20 seconds. Then, over time, it took three minutes for the water temperature to go from 74 F to 113 F. There may have been an issue with the wireless functionality and interference. When we were troubleshooting, we did have to pair the devices to get them in sync again. And then it seemed like they stopped talking to one another. Ah...long distance relationships.

Yes, there is a permanent magnet motor, but we'd still hear the pump whirring the day away. The situation was the same before and after the retrofit. I don't think we noticed the noise as much before the retrofit because we had forced air contributing to our daily soundtrack as well.

SWEI

The HotLink is similar in concept to the Grundfos Comfort system, but the EOL thermostatic valve has much larger passages and is cleanable/replaceable.

Rich_49

Hatteras . We Have used the Smart plus with that technology for a few years now . It does learn and relearn based on usage , very well might I add .

Harvey Ramer

I installed a smart plus for a retired engineer. That was a mistake I won't soon repeat.

SWEI

Hatterasguy said:

For some reason, I had thought it was a new product for Taco.

I believe HotLink is relatively new -- my PDF says 2014, but it may be a re-issue.

Harvey Ramer

Not much to tell, really. Smart plus works well with people who have schedules. Retired people don't always have schedules. Retired engineers, make it a point not to have a schedule and they are also very analytical. The poor pump just can't do what they want it to.

Glad to hear about your success with the Smart Plus, Erin. I can tell you are excited about it.

BobC

Engineers are like kids who just leaned a new word -

Why?

If we see something new we won't rest till we've taken it apart and figured out how it works. i still take stuff apart to see how it works and I'm 69 years old.

Bob

BobC

Years ago I was asked to find out why one of our high voltage designs was sporadically going out of limits. The supply was used on the display of the F15 and had very tight specs (10 v out of 10,000v).

It seemed to work very well but sometimes it would go 100v out of range for no apparent reason. After studying the problem for a while it looked like it was sensitive to position. After pulling out some more of my hair I realized the problem was a little glass mil spec diode - JTX 1N4150. It turns out some of the diodes were clear glass and the others were blue. The clear glass diodes exhibited a photoelectric effect if light was shined on them, it was enough to throw the feedback loop off about 1% (we had to hold a 0.1% range).

Cover any glass diodes in that location with a little black epoxy and the problem was solved. This fault would not happen in the aircraft because the supply was located where it could not have light fall on it but it could show up when mounted in a test jig.

Bob

nate379

I have a setup in my house, the kitchen sink is the last thing on the hot water run so it takes a while and cools down fast (like ice cold in a few mins of no use). I forget the brand, the pump is blue and I bought it at Lowe's for about $275. Can either run all the time or on a timer.

I have it come on every couple hours for a few mins. Has worked fine for years. One thing though it is does seem to raise the water pressure quite a bit.
It's been fine as my water pressure is terrible (20-30psi at the main) but I'm currently adding in a booster pump so I may end up having to remove the water heater deal.

DanHolohan

I'm looking forward to enjoying this on my next visit!

Roohollah

There are many lessons to derive from this subject. Here, we control semi yearly wet rotor Circulators ,especially those which have been installed for domestic hot water return . PH and total hardness are vital criteria when this type of Circulators are recirculating hot water in piping .I have attached a photo of inside of s circulator which has suffered from deposits .Thank you for providing us with practical solutions which professionals share with us.