I guess that makes sense. I was thinking that it had to overcome the pressure of the water supply coming up the line, to force the water back down the cold water line. But once the lines are pressurized, I guess the water just sits there and can easily be circulated.
It’s making a lot more sense to me now, than it did initially. Although I agree with you that it seems like overkill for a typical home.
Ahh. I’m not big into gaming, but I can understand how an older gaming mouse may not have the same sort of efficiency as an everyday office work mouse.
My master bathroom is on the far end of the house from the water heater, so it takes a long time to get hot water. Some quick math on the cost to keep that water hot (natural gas heater) minus the water savings plus the electricity to run the pump, and I think it’d cost about 15¢ a day to always have instant hot water there during the morning and evening periods when we use it. It’s a bummer that the hot water pipes aren’t terribly well insulated here in the south and so they cool pretty quickly especially in the winter. May be worth it for the convenience.
I didn’t realize they were insulated at all. 
Same here. I like instant hot water as much as the next guy. But this seems like a lot of work, complication, and expense to save a few seconds of running the faucet waiting for the water to get warm. Maybe I just don’t live in a big enough home.
This is sort of a big custom house thing. I’ve never seen one in more modest ones or anything built in subdivisions. Guess it depends on whether you want to waste water or electricity.
In CA, we are accustomed to saving water even when there is no drought. One way is to run water from the hot water tap into a pail or other container while waiting for it get hot. The water can be used to flush the toilet, water landscaping, etc.
Especially when, for the most part, it’s only the first person of the day that’ll benefit from it. Unless the household has drastically different schedules, anyone following the first person will have warmer water right away, anyways. Not just consecutive users, but also second bathrooms on the same “loop”.
If you were being truly frugal, you’d use a mouse that doesn’t require batteries.
My husband makes me turn off the mouse when I’m not using it. That’s frugal. Of course, we don’t use the iMac much daily.
I would say this crosses the line from “frugal” to “cheapskate” 
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I turn mine off at the end of the day.
I don’t know. It worked for us pretty well with 3 kids. True you need to ramp up the number of rechargeables you have. For us it ended up being about 30 AA and 20 AAA. Since they pay for themselves after 10-15 recharges though, with all the toys and remotes around, you get your money back pretty fast (~1 yr). Plus the burden of changing batteries is over once you teach the oldest kid to change batteries in toys and put the used up ones back on the charger. Our oldest daughter was 8 when she took that task on. Gives them a chore to do, gets them familiar with using screwdrivers, win-win. And our second daughter could not wait to be old enough to be trusted with the responsibility of changing batteries so we never ran out of volunteers (free labor 4tw). The only thing we had to watch for was when giving away/selling old toys, to make sure we retrieved the batteries from them. Still over the years where you need toy batteries, we’ve made our money back many times over for little real work. I’d certainly do it again.
My Amazon recharagables suck. I have hundreds invested in the platform. Turns out, the 1.2 Volt AA and AAAs don’t work in half the shit we have.
Because they’re slightly bigger and physically dont fit? Amazon batteries worked great in my electric toothbrush - then I got a new one, and they fit so tight they started to literally melt a hole in the plastic endcap. Combined with a switch to game controllers with internal batteries, most of my Amazon batteries sit unused these days.
No, because things are expecting 1.5 Volts versus the 1.2 that Amazon ones provide. Also, I have ran into the issue where the positive side isn’t long enough and thus doesn’t make contact. I was able to just push the row of batteries to the positive side and let the negative side spring take up the slack, but that doesn’t always do the trick.
30 rechargeable AAs and 20 rechargeable AAAs is way too much of an investment for the sort of toys I power at my house. I’m talking little Thomas size trains and magic track cars. If anything, I’ve considered moving to heavy duty batteries. That being said, my kids are younger, but I can forsee doing exactly what you did when they get older and have a few specific toys where they really run them down. I doubt I’ll convert everything over until we’re down to needing less than 20 total rechargeable batteries.
All rechargeable AA/AAA/C/D are 1.2 volts. It stinks for a few devices that demand the correct voltage or flash low batt, but for all of my kids toys they’re perfectly fine.
I’ve been disappointed in the past when store brands that I love change suppliers, and you have no indication until you experience it that they’re not the same. A mild frustration for consumables, but really frustrating for more durable products like clothes, batteries, etc. I think Amazon does it more often than others as they constantly chase cost savings, so it pays to evaluate what you got carefully and send it back during the return window if its not what you’re expecting.
No they’re not. A simple Amazon search proves this. I have 1.5V ones upstairs, right next to the Amazon 1.2V ones.
You’re right, I was not familiar with the different types of rechargeables.
The most common rechargeable batteries are 1.2v NiMH. That’s not a limitation on the Amazon brand, it’s the standard.
Out of curiosity, what device(s) are you using them in? We have two medical devices that I use alkaline batteries in, but everything else is just fine with 1.2v.
Right, all NiMH were 1.2V nominal, but when fully charged they should actually be closer to 1.35V.
More recently I’ve seen (and bought) 1.5V LiIon rechargeables that supposedly have a 3.7V cell inside (4.2V when charged) and a chip that converts it to 1.5V. I bought four no-brand not long ago (I wanna say from a hot deals thread here, but I can’t find it now), but 3 of them aren’t charging properly anymore and the fourth isn’t working that well either. I see 1.5V NiMH now, but don’t know anything about them. I’d say if they’re not made in Japan by Panasonic or Samsung, they’re probably lying 