eli5, how does a city hot water system work? How does hot water remain heated while traveling through pipes to our faucets?

619 views

Hello everyone, recently my city has been doing some repairs to the city’s hot water system and i was without hot water for about 3 weeks.

That got me wondering, how exactly does this work? I read something about a heating agent but i don’t know what that means. And how does the water stay hot while travelling from the place it gets heated to our homes?

Thanks!

In: 25

17 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

My understanding is that municipal hot water systems are REALLY rare, according to wikipedia there’s something like 20 cities in the US that do this.

In the vast majority of the country only cold water is supplied by the city. Every home (or building) has a method of heating the water on site and it’s only at that point that it breaks into 2 pipes (1 hot and 1 cold). There’s a few methods for heating the water but the most common is a hot water tank (gas or electric), other homes have an “on demand” hot water heater that’s attached to the home’s furnace.

To answer your question, the pipes are insulated so the water stays hot while traveling.

You are viewing 1 out of 17 answers, click here to view all answers.