For over a century the water heater has been a “dumb” standalone appliance - a tank that heats in response to temperature drops. Electrification requires this to change, and here at Cala we’re driving industry transformation based on our vision:

Water heaters are a thermal platform that should deliver zero-emissions comfort by coordinating with the rest of the home, the grid, and beyond.

Today, we’re taking a major step towards that vision by announcing that Cala now integrates with home recirculation pumps. 

While this might sound like a technical refinement, it represents a fundamental shift in how homes can better manage the typical tradeoffs between energy and comfort, and demonstrates how Cala is building a thermal platform that scales beyond a single piece of hardware.

Recirculation pumps save water and increase convenience by reducing hot water wait times at the taps. And while they’re not needed in every home, they can be a good fit in large homes or those with longer piping runs. But water heaters often experience a “capacity gap” when coupled with recirculation; they can struggle to keep up with the constant circulation or use excessive amounts of energy to do so. This capacity gap can be worse with heat pump water heaters, which are 3-5X more efficient than traditional electric or gas units, but also heat more slowly. 

Recirculation tradeoffs are a real problem - one we hear about frequently from both contractors and homeowners. But traditional systems aren’t well suited to adapt to recirculation, and guidance for contractors is usually limited or missing altogether.

But Cala is built for solving this type of problem in a way that other systems aren’t. Our patented Predictive Intelligence^TM and flow sensor automatically learn each home’s hot water rhythms - including recirculation - to provide ample hot water while heating it as efficiently as possible with our variable speed compressor. With our integrated mixing valve, Cala can also overheat the water in the tank to increase effective capacity while guaranteeing the homeowner gets safe, comfortable, temperatures at the taps. 

Today we’ve released a Technical Bulletin providing clear, specific guidance for how to install and program recirculation pumps for optimal performance with Cala. Importantly, this guidance ensures that recirculating water passes through the Cala flow sensor so that Cala’s Predictive Intelligence^TM takes recirculation into account and efficiently meets hot water demand while the pump reduces wait times at the taps.

We’ve also added recirculation support directly in our app to enhance remote monitoring capabilities for those homes – a feature which contractors and homeowners already love.

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This is a case study of how Cala is built differently, both as a product and a business. For homes that have recirculation pumps, contractors and homeowners care deeply about getting the coordination between the water heater and pump right. We’ve rapidly developed and implemented a solution to give our customers peace of mind that they can deploy Cala in these homes.

Looking ahead, we’re working with leading recirculation pump manufacturers to develop direct integration between Cala and the next generation of recirculation pumps. This will allow the two products to synchronize to efficiently provide ample hot water, reduce wait times, and conserve wasted water.

In sum, this is an exciting milestone because it solves a real problem faced by contractors and homeowners, demonstrates the impact of Cala’s vision for water heating as a thermal platform rather than a standalone device, and highlights the speed and urgency with which Cala operates to solve important issues for our contractors and customers.

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