Have we forgotten to make heat traps? (2012)

Since the submitted link has a download disposition we've updated it from https://www.esbe.eu/it/en/~/media/ESBE%20Public%20web_BRserv... to the abstract.

I designed and installed a complete hydronic heating system in our house last year, replacing a conventional forced air system. It being the first time I'd ever done such a thing (and indeed, the first time I'd ever really been exposed to hydronic heating at all) I learned everything through reading (mostly the excellent idonrics series at https://www.caleffi.com/usa/en-us/technical-magazine). I went really deep on the reading so while I had/have a pretty solid theoretical understanding I was/am a complete novice on the craft side of the field.

Overall, the practice seems to be very heuristic based, with every installation being a bit different and rules of thumb being the norm. Our system seems to work fairly well in practice, but I've been curious to get a professional's opinion on it (the only pro that's seen it was the gas guy who did the final hookup, who seemed impressed but didn't really offer any specific criticisms).

Repo at https://github.com/mtrudel/boiler

I've since added an elixir based graphing system to it, at

http://mat.geeky.net/boiler

My water heater has one made from PEX. From memory, I would guess it adds about 18".

With 3/4" PEX at a relatively slow 1.5 GPM flow rate, that adds about 1.4 seconds to 'hot water delivery time', though that's not entirely accurate, because the loop itself has some heated water trapped in it.

This could use a (2012), per the article date.

It also largely answers the question in the first paragraph:

>Newer water heaters have built-in heat traps.

So it's "no, they're just done by default and hidden". Seems like a reasonable thing to do.