006 (1/2" Sweat) Taco Bronze Circulator, 1/40 HP

I bought this pump to create a hot water recirculation loop so I can have instant hot water. The pump works fine. It creates enough pressure head to overcome the check valve (found this out the hard way - the first pump I bought was a 003 that didn't create enough pressure head to overcome the check valve. This 006 pump does fine). Its a fairly low volume pump, so you're not pump a large volume of water. With decent insulation on the pipes, the water stays hot during the entire loop, so when I turn on the hot water, the water is essentially hot instantly. My biggest complaint is that its hard to isolate the pump so the noise of the pump isn't transmitted thru the house. I ended up using some 1.25 inch pipe hangers and foam insulation to grab the pump around the inlet and outlet ports. There's plenty of metal around the ports, and the foam isolates the pump so its fairly quiet. I run the pump all the time, so the water heater does cycle a little more often, but this is where the good pipe insulation really helps manage the costs. Also, with the 24/7 recirculation, I have hot water whenever I want. If the pump was on a timer, you won't have hot water when you're off-cycle. I've had the pump for about 18 months, and its done fine so far. If you're looking for a hot water recirc pump, this Taco pump should work fine.

cartridge needs replacing 1 or 2 times per heating season due to junk in boiler water. I believe HVAC guy made a bad choice when installing this unit. S/B a more heavy duty unit for this application. We are running a hot water baseboard off the steam boiler.