Heating Pipes Option?

16 years ago

We live in a 6-room one story house in North Carolina. In winter getting hot water in the kitchen sink takes running the hot water faucet for about 3-4 minutes, because the boiler is on the opposite side of the house.

We have plastic piping. Would insulating the hot water pipe improve the problem? Would wire heaters work? If so, how costly are they to buy and how complicated to install, and how much electricity do they consume?

Comments would be appreciated.

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Comments (3)

ken_in_virginia
16 years ago
what might work best for you is a circulating pump...you could mouth it under the kitchen sink and with the push of a buttom the pump would circulate the water till it is warm or you can set it on a timer so hot water is always there when you need it....Home Depot sells the unit for about 199 dollars
heimert
16 years ago
Or a small tankless heater near the kitchen.

As for your questions: (1) insulating the pipes will not help much because in between uses the pipes will get cold again--insulation only slows the rate of cooling. So you will still need to run the water to get full-on hot. (2) Those wire heaters are designed to keep pipes from freezing, not for getting hot water. They'd be an extremely inefficient way to obtain hot water.
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alphonse
16 years ago
Insulating hot water piping is ALWAYS a good idea. Unless you are using the water as space heater. Some locales in N.C. don't have basements, piping run through crawlspace or under pier construction will lose heat faster than the former. In a basement or crawlspace one could rationalize that the heat loss is useful during the heating season.

Heat trace cable comes in different types, in addition to those for freeze protection. Constant wattage cable is relatively easy to install, but MUST have thermostatic control. 5w/ft is a common size. 20' will cost one cent/Hr to run if your POCO charges .10 kWh.

Quality insulation and good control will minimize run time. It would take approx. 100' of 5w/ft cable to equal the elec. consumption of the small circ. pumps, and unlike motors, cable has no inrush current nor moving parts to wear and make noise. A circ. pump returns water to be re- heated, so factor that in to your cost comparison. If a return line can't be run, the discharge is piped to the cold line...I hate brushing my teeth with warm water.