Plumbing – install a hot water circulator pump without using the drain valve

plumbing

We just replaced our hot water heater because we were getting a lot of mineral deposits in our fixtures throughout the house because the hot water loop returned to the bottom of the tank and always mixed up the sediment in the tank. Our plumber is trying to install a recirculation pump without using the drain valve (at the bottom of the tank) as the return for the loop. He is trying to explain to me how putting a pump in different places can circulate the hot water through the house and back into the hot water heater. Is this even possible?

Here is the current setup, which isn't really working. Inconsistent water temperatures, and some times little to no hot water.

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Thanks for your help!!

Best Answer

You can use the cold water inlet to connect the recirculator input by a tee (if your boiler don't have a half-height water inlet purposed for recirculation return), just put one-way valves on both recirculation return and cold water feed.enter image description here But usually, boilers has an inlet at about half-height to connect the recirculation return.

NOTES:

black rectangle on the left represents the boiler
you need both the 1-way valves because you:
don't want cold water do go 'backward' trough the recirculation loop
you must avoid backflow to cold water supply
boiler hot water oulet and cold water inlet are on right side but can be on any side of the boiler.

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