Green Smart Hot Water Recirculator

What a good, reliable, inexpensive, no fuss install pump? Takes about 3 minutes for my shower to warm up. Arggg.

I thought the same thing. I wrote a piston that runs every morning before work and then only when triggered by motion if it hasn’t run for 60 minutes. If you turn it on manually, it will also make note of the time and turn it off after the timer. You can configure how many minutes you want it to run and how often.

Pick two of the four :slight_smile:

I use these: http://readytemp.com/ - because I can hook a momentary contact to them, and they will pump ONLY until the return water reaches a specified temp, no matter how many times you “turn it on.”

There are others: here’s a review of several: https://waterfilteranswers.com/recirculation-pump-reviews/

()I’m not affiliated with any of the above suppliers).

For those newly reviewing this thread, it’s probably useful for me to note that this automation covers most every use case in the common home that needs/uses hot water - far more than just your morning shower:

  • Circulate whenever anyone enters the bathroom - sensing motion, a light being turned on, a door being closed, etc.
  • Circulate whenever someone is at the kitchen sink - sensing motion or a light turned on
  • Circulate when the washing machine is running - sensing a multi-sensor for acceleration or when the laundry door opens
  • Circulate when the dishwasher is running - sensing the power draw via a SmartThings switch/outlet
  • Circulate on a repeating schedule
  • Circulate until a temp sensor reaches a set temp (and repeat to keep it at that temp)
  • Circulate only during specific ST Location Modes
  • Circulate when the ST Mode changes (to Home/Awake, for example)
  • Handles circulating pump setups that require only a momentary switch input, or a simple on/off cycle, or turn them on and run for N (1-60) minutes before turning them off again
  • Handles a minimum time between activations (1-120 minutes)

As such, it pretty much covers what all the WebCOrE pistons posted here do, and much, much more - all in a customizable SmartApp that can be reconfigured easily on your mobile device. For free - no programming required :slight_smile: .

2 Likes

v2018.11.29 released at 10:40am EST

  • Improves power change logic

Barry-
newb to home automation. I am trying to implement a real simplistic version of your setup. Currently through google home I ask for hot water and it turns the switch to the recirculator on. I just need to refine it so it will switch off in 2 minutes and prevent it from being turned on again if an event just happened.
Using IFTTT so far.
This question reflects my ignorance- Your code above- how do I implement it? using the samsung developers IDE?

Hello again, I have been using this app with no problems for a while now and all the sudden it is not turning off my recirc pump after the specified time. Any ideas what might cause that? I am using webcore now so I may look for a solution there instead but hoping I can get this working with this app again.

Usually logic doesn’t “wear out” and stop working, so I’d look to see if the switch to your pump is still working


Do the logs for the App indicate that it is TRYING to turn off the pump (and the pump just isn’t getting turned off), or do the logs just show the pump being turned on, but never turned off?

Thank you for the quick response. I checked the logs, and it looks like the app is not triggering the off command after the set time (1 minute). I turned off the app due to the issue, but I went back to my logs from a couple days ago.It looks like that the App is successfully sending the turn on command when triggered but is inconsistent in sending the off command. In some cases it was triggering the off command 5 minutes after turn on, and in other cases it was taking almost an hour. The timestamp of the first “Turn on” action that did not successfully turn off after 1 minute was 2020-05-29 9:00:58.535 PM CDT.

I reinstalled the app again today and am still seeing the same behavior. I thought updating it (I had version 2018.11.28a before, and now am using 2018.11.29) might help, but it isn’t.

I agree it is strange for the “logic” to break, but I am wondering if some underlying mechanism changed causing this problem. Wanted to check if any others are experiencing the issue. The good news is that I have begun using webcore since I first was looking for this solution, so I can easily use a piston that works for all my requirements, so no need to spend time troubleshooting this for me. I do appreciate all the benefits this app has been providing me and your responsiveness to everyone’s questions!