Return piping water heaters

Alan_6

I installed a return pump on my fathers water heater. I used a check valve and piped it to the drain on the water heater. Since then the water does not feel very hot at the fixtures, or the hot out pipe at the top the water heater. Also turned up the thermostat on the lower end of unit, it is a power vent unit, and the water still does not feel very warm. I cannot prove there is any mixing. Any Idea's?

RELY

Hot water

Did you put service valves on either side of the circulator if so shut it off unplug cir and see if it returns to normal and post back

Larry Weingarten

hot tech topics

Hello: Dan was kind enough to put an article we wrote "Domestic Hot Water Recirc Systems" in "Hot Tech Topics". It might help. Do be sure the pump is pumping water towards the heater... Sounds like it might not be.

Weezbo

circs basakwards.

you should be seeing a change soon as you flip the pumu in the direction to the storage tank. also,i dont know if i should say this buh...if you take the tube out of the water heater and lob off about a foot or so....

David Efflandt

Might be pumping too fast

Even if the pump is in the right direction, it should only be pumping fast enough to get heat to the farthest fixtures. If pumping too fast, the heat loss of the piping (especially if not insulated) might exceed the heat gain from speeding through the heater.

My bro-in-law sort of had that problem with his furnace. He heard that a fan thermostat set to a lower temperature would be more efficient because it would extract more heat before the fan shut off. So he tried running the fan constantly at high speed (A/C setting). But the heat loss from circulating lukewarm air at high speed through the ducts was so great that the furnace could not heat the air going through it that fast (home temperature dropped to 50). Once he set it back to normal, so furnace could heat the air before sending it through the ducts, everything worked fine.