Imagine drawing a line from your water heater to each of your hot water fixtures in turn – one continuous line that ends up back at the water heater after you have reached the last fixture. Now imagine hot water moving through every inch of that line. You’ve just drawn a recirculation system.

Recirculation systems allow you to keep hot water in motion through a loop from the farthest fixture back to the water heater. Because there is hot water throughout the entire loop at all times, the system can provide instant hot water anywhere in the loop at any time.

Some larger or custom homes have a recirculation system installed during construction. This type of system has a dedicated return loop back to the water heater, and a pump is used with a timer to keep the hot water in motion. If your home wasn’t built with a recirculation system, you can still enjoy the benefits of one with an after market model. These systems utilize the cold water line as the return loop to the water heater, allowing hot water to cross over into the cold line and make its way back to the heater. If at any time someone uses cold water, the crossover stops immediately and cold water is supplied out the cold water line, so you never turn on the cold water and get hot instead.