From Guest Blogger Brian McGowan: Heat Recovery Device — Should I Do It?
Quite a few years ago I thought it would be good to recover heat from drain water since heating water is very energy intensive. A couple of my plumber friends and I discussed several ways to do it trying to account for all the problems that might be encountered. Then one of them went to a plumbers trade show and found a simple drain water heat exchanger. It was a piece of 4” copper pipe with ½” copper water pipe wrapped around it the idea being to run cold water through the ½” pipe from bottom to top and warm it up before feeding it into the hot water heater thus recovering the heat and saving energy. When I had sewer installed in my house in 2005 I ordered one of these and had the sewer installers put it in the vertical drain line. In April of 2007, when I had time and a friend who was faster at soldering than I was could help, I hooked it up. Pictures of that installation are here.
From the first month it was in I noticed a big difference in my power usage. From what I noticed I calculated that, if my electric rates didn’t change, it would pay for itself in 5 years. That 5 years is now up and it has indeed paid for itself. It said it would save me 30%+ and it has done that.
The other day I received an interesting email. The company that made this device has I think been purchased and moved from Long Island to Colorado. They must have purchased the customer list also and the email was advertising for people to become distributors. I was interested and asked for more information. The reply came describing the deal. In short they want a $5K buy in and I need to sell 100 units a year. They will support me by listing me as a distributor on their website and advertise the price at higher than my price so I can make a profit, give me advertising material and a sign for trade show booths and so forth.
I have been trying to get into the alternate/renewable energy field since I got laid off almost a year and a half ago but no one is hiring. Money is very tight for me. I am a lousy salesman and a lousy businessman. I am a doer of things and have done engineering throughout my career. I know this device works and actually does what it says it does, requires no energy or maintenance and will very likely still be working very long after I am gone. A payoff that short in this field is pretty good I think. I think this thing is simple and great and works as advertised, no more no less, but I am not sure I can sell 100 of these a year.
Finding people that think that far ahead is hard to do in this instant ROI world. I think it is a waste to actually literally flush energy down the drain when you can recover it this easily. I think they should be in every government building and school. I think they should be in every new house. I have even thought about a house design that would center 3 bathrooms and a kitchen around a single drain pipe stand so all drain water heat could be saved unlike my house where the kitchen is at the other end of the house and has a separate drain. They didn’t mention the price or the advertised price but when I bought mine it was based on the price of copper since that is what it is made of. I am sure they are more expensive now than when I bought mine.
Now I am asking for opinions. I need a little help here. Should I give this serious consideration? What customer base should I go after? Plumbers? Building owners? Architects? Builders? Homeowners? Nothing would please me more than to be able to make money at something like this so I could continue with my many energy projects.
What do you all think?
Brian McGowan
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid
You would not do much business here in Ontario, Canada as these have been selling in Home Depot for several years. Better check your Home Depot.
Wow GT, you are right! A quick search on Canada’s Home Depot site shows 28 models of the device. Searching Home Depot U.S.A yields nothing. Once again I am forced to say…something fishy here. Is the U.S. just geared to make sure we use and waste as much power as possible and to thwart those that would try to do better???
That product is code approved, it is real, it does work, it does not break, savings are real. I am an instructor for IAPMO (the Plumbing Code) Green Plumbing Mechanical Supplement) Vertical is best arrangement for application, the reason the West is not using it is because Slab Construction is dominant, no vertical place to put it. How much is a 7 footer?
I have written for pricing. The one I installed pictured above is 60″ and I think it now goes for around $650.00. I probably could have gotten away with the 40″ one since from about 2/3 of the way down to the bottom is the temperatura of the incoming water so I think by then I have extracted all the heat. When I bought it the price was $300.00 but then copper really went up shortly after that.
They claim that even in a slab it’s worth getting a pump and pumping the water to the top of the exchanger so the heat can be extracted. They say the minimal amount of power to pump the water is worth it to gain the heat back. I have thought of an arrangement that would allow overflow to head down the drainpipe if the pump should fail. I kind of thought of this for resturants, many of wich are in a slab, but it would work anywhere.
My thought was to have a “bucket” for lack of a better term, for the drain water to drain into with a sump pump type of thing in it and the bucket would have a 4″ hole at the top on the side. The exchanger would be setup over the drain pipe and have a 4″ Hub x Hub x Hub Long Radius Sanitary Tee between it and the drainpipe. The pump float switch would be set as low as possible to get the most water to the top of the exchanger but if the pump failed the bucket would fill until it drained out the hole in the side into the long radius of the sanitary T. I have also seen a thing that looks like it has 2 long radius thingys on it as well as the top and bottom holes so I thought one could be for the toilets and the other for sink and shower water from the bucket overflow. That would keep toilet flushing from making a mess out of the warm water and the pump.
That part I was talking about is an HxHxHxH double sanitary T.