I have recently purchased a 3/2.5 house w/ gas heat and hot water due to the rising costs in gas I am looking into replacing water heater, current is 14 yrs old. Heater is in garage on one side of house, 2 baths are on other side of house,and as you would expect it takes forever to get hot water to that side of the house. I am interested in installing an efficient water heater and recirculating pump. I don't even know where to start. I plan to purchase a new water heater, and install pump. Where should the pump go? What size? Current tank is 40 gal, the water lines appear to be in the slab. I have plenty of attic room. Please advise the best course of action.

Hi Paul,
I live in Florida where this is a common complaint.
A recirculation system isn't all that hard to install. You will need soldering equipment and some plumbing skills but if you're confident enough to change out your heater you can certainly loop a 1/2" return line through the attic from the heater to the farthest bath room (see image). You will need a recirculating pump, (see image) and enough 1/2" soft copper to run from the heater to the bathroom. Also you will need fittings to connect both ends. The pump should have installation instructions. You may install the pump one of two places. You may install it at the boiler drain or tie it into the cold water supply of the heater. It works the same at either place. You will then loop a1/2" return line from the heater to the handiest hot water supply line in the bath room. This puts hot water in the branch line so there will be a almost a instant draw. I've put up a typical recirculating system for you to check out along of a picture of a pump. Good luck, Tom

I did a similar project not long ago. The hot water recirc. Pump I found came in 2 models- one which is installed under the sink and requires an electrical outlet under the sink, the other is installed at the water heater, both use a thermostatically controlled valve (when temp drops, it opens the valve and recirculates the water). It was very easy to do, and doesn't require a return line to be run. It uses the cold water side as the return instead of running new pipes. Check out the products "autocirc1" and "autocirc2" @ http://www.autocirc.com.
I'm no professional, but I hope this may help you out!

I recently installed an AutoCirc2 w/ 3 diverter valves (one valve for each of three hot water branches). It was a bit more work to install the pump than I expected, but it is certainly a manageable project. The valves were more of a pain, because of the close quarters under sinks, trying to find the best combination of flexible tubes, and fighting the tubes' resistance to my plan of routing.

All in all, it's a great product. It is not a true recirculating system, but it really is better than none. We're happy.