alt Hacker NewsWeirdly enough, this is not the case in the former Soviet Union. Because there's always a reverse pipe ("obratka") that has hot water constantly circulate and the only part that cools down is the small portion of pipe between "obratka" connection and the faucet, so "heating up" takes a second tops.
It's puzzling why no one in the civilised world adopted this idea :/
Many things are told about emigres being constantly homesick etc., and i believe this is largely bullshit, but this is the only thing i really miss from my Soviet past.
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I've seen this in a few places, but it's rare because of all the energy (heat loss and energy required to drive the circulation) that gets used up when the water is recirculating but nobody is using it--which is most of the time.
I was recently in Iceland, and since a lot of heat is geothermal, recirc would probably make sense, but I can't remember having it. Maybe it's the pumping cost? Although natural convection driven by the difference in density between hot and cold water might make up for at least part of that.
It’s a thing in the US too, but not common. I always understood them to be expensive to use, as you always have a pump running and hot water cooling down and needing reheating.
Hot water recirculating pump. https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/hot-water-recirculati...
Hot water recirculation is a thing I have heard of done in the United States. I don't know how common it is, but a simple Home Depot search brought up a bunch of results for options.
https://www.plumbingsupply.com/recirculating-systems-explain...
You can install an immediate hot water heater at the sink if you’d like.
This idea comes for free if you're also using hot water in radiators as a way to heat your home at the same time. Which the Soviets did. And in the Soviet era, they also were generally heating that water at the district level, then circulating it to all of the homes. This can only be workable if you're pumping the water continuously. So the cost of the pumping is just part of the overall system.
Places where this was built up, still generally use it today.
In the USA, nobody ever built the district wide heaters. Nor would they be viable in the suburbs that many of us live in. We generally use central air instead of radiators to heat our houses. And the result is that constantly circulating hot water is significantly more expensive for us.
Does that answer your question?