Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy -- meditate on these things.
Our new house has fairly long hot water lines to the kitchen and bathroom, so I was looking for different solutions to getting there to be hot water quicker. I researched some tankless heaters, and for the kitchen and washing machine (on one trunk) a small heater (12 amps) would have worked well. But, for the bathroom, a good sized heater (with our 45 degree incoming cold water) would have needed a 200 amp service to the house, with 60 amps (220 volt) dedicated to it. So, an awful lot of upgrades, not counting the tons of ongoing electricity.So, I bought a hot water recirculator at Home Depot, but it turns out it is junk. I talked to a sales guy at the manufacturer, and he didn't seem to understand the problem. The idea is that it watches the temperature of the water in the hot water pipe right under the sink, and whenever it falls under a certain temperature (and also within certain configurable times during the day), it sends the warm water back down to the hot water heater to be reheated. So, the same water is reheated multiple times, using more energy, but you gain time by not waiting for the hot water to be hot, and also not putting all the cold water down the drain. I am not sure how much extra energy is used in reheating the water all the time.
But, the way this particular recirculator works is by putting the warm water into the cold water pipe, on its way down to the heater. So, now you waste warm water and time as you wait for the cold water to cool down. As far as I can figure out, the time wasted is just about the same, though I could route the cold water pipe a shorter distance, and, you are now putting warm water down the drain instead of cold water.
The sales guy agreed that "potentially" that could happen. I don't see how it is not guaranteed for it to waste hot water and time. So, I'll add it to the pile of things to return to home depot - we seem to do that quite often these days.
There are recirculators that use a third pipe, which Watts Premier doesn't sell, presumably why the sales guy had such a hard time admitting their product's weaknesses. (I am sure it would work quite nicely for heating up the hot water pipe quickly)
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Waiting for cold water reminded me of our system. In the winter we wait for the water to run hot, and in the summer for the water to run cool. Often in the summer I can take an entire shower using "cold" water alone. This is why we have a milk jug at the sink to capture some of the water that is wasted in the waiting.
I know the feeling, we too ended up taking back our Grundfos system which is just like the watts premier you spoke of. We were suspicious after reading the instructions over. The instructions said something about testing to make sure the comfort valves are working properly you should shut off the cold water supply and open the cold water faucet. If water comes out the cold water faucet then the valve is working properly. After reading it a few times I finally understood the process. The black by-pass valves that install under the sinks allow water from the hot side to passover into the cold side until hot water closes the valve. My problem with the Grundfos UP15 and the Watts Premier is the by-pass comfort valves they use. When installed there was just no way to get "only" water from my cold faucets. Even with the system off, using our cold water faucet pulled water out of the hot water lines and cold water lines. The thought of my water heater waking up whenever I used my cold water was too much for me to accept. The only one that worked for us was Readytemp by Temtrol. A bit pricey but nowhere near the cost of installing a tankless, so we kept it.
The system should work such that it doesn't pull hot water from the hot water side unless the temperature is low on the hot side, in which case, it would run whether or not you had the cold water running.
I talked to a guy at Home Depot, who said his solution was to run a third line from the hot water side at your sink and plug it into the drain on the hot water tank. No pump required. He said he had done it a couple times, and it "just worked", something about feeding by gravity. I was skeptical, so he said look it up on the internet.
For us, I was replacing the pipes anyway, to get rid of the clogged up pipes (mostly iron) and ran the hot water line in a shorter direction, so the water gets hotter quicker than it used to - we'll have to see if that is enough.