Heat Recovery Systems
From a colleague in Central Pennsylvania, the definitive eco-do-it-yourselfer Brain McGowan:
Craig, I received this at the drain water heat exchanger place after I told them about what I had seen at the Energy Independence Day fair. I don’t know if you have time to look it over and give an opinion or not. You are the only person I know that might be able to proffer an opinion about this.
Drain water heat recycling (DWHR) is now in the ICC (international code council) Energy Conservation Code… as we learn how the codes work and who follows what, it is getting pretty exciting! We’re calling every state energy office. PA is way behind the times, lol; the poor lady was so embarrassed but gave us all kinds of nifty info. I’m attaching the newest flyer and snipets of the ICC code that mentions DWHR. Our competitors in Canada do not know about this, yet. The east coast is adopting the 2015 code a lot more than the west and some states have already made it mandatory! In NY, starting Oct 3rd, 2016 ALL new construction will require DWHR.
I think we should be making progress but I don’t know. There is interest but no action.
You’re always so deferential; I always have time to read your submissions, Brian.
All I can do is reiterate our previous discussions, in which we’ve concluded that a big part of the problem here is sex appeal. Here you have an inert piece of metal, doing its job invisibly.
Of course, that’s a shame, but it’s true to a degree of solar PV as well. Some people are turned off that there are no loud noises, no pounding pistons, etc. That’s a sad feature of our Western psyche, and I really don’t know what to do to change it.
I suppose that your best bet is to slog it out, and wait for the states to enact regulation in the same way that New York did.
Btw, if I were capable of changing the Western psyche, I certainly wouldn’t stop with DWHR. We believe (generally) that war is the go-to way of settling our differences, and that efforts to stem the tide of environmental destruction are anti-capitalistic. Yowza.
I would say that the biggest bang for buck with such technology comes where there is a large and fairly constant heat load.
Sports facilities, laundromats, universities hotels, apartment blocks with District heating, large offices, industrial facilities etc.
The worst case would be a single person dwelling – with the possible exception of the washing machine. (There is very little heat to be recovered from one short shower), and the heat will in any case, dissipate before the occupier showers again!
While those facilities you mentioned would certainly benefit greatly from this device, I can tell you from personal experience that it works great even with only 2 people in the house. In general the more hot water you use the faster this unit will pay for itself and start earning money for the owner. I put one in my house in 2005 and hooked it up in 2007 due to having to do some other plumbing tasks. I immediately noticed a 100kWh/month drop in power used to heat water. I have since changed out the cast iron drain system for PVC and since there is less heat loss I am delivering hotter drain water to my exchanger and seeing an even greater benefit.
90% of the energy you use to heat water goes right down the drain unless you have one of these installed.
Heat is not stored in the unit but used immediately. This unit works with any method of heating water. It reduces or eliminates water heater recovery time and extends the life of the water heater by no making it work so hard. The company recommends having 4 people in the house to make the payoff worthwhile but I calculated that even with only two of us in the house and the kitchen not even hooked to it the payoff would be 5 years with an electricity cost of 5.6 cents/kWh. Since PECO removed the “off peak” meter all power is now 14.9 cents/kWh so payoff would be faster.
This is a product that does exactly what is says it will and is worth the investment.
Just to make things clear. It just happens that the Greenfox drain water heat recovery unit is manufactured in Canada. The Greenfox is a rebranded Canadian product and they are simply an agent that marks up the product. There are also other manufacturers who sell through distributors in the USA. There is powerpipe and ThermoDrain as well as Watercycles.
To Daniel Bauchemin,
You’re information on the re-branding of the GreenFoX is totally incorrect. Swing Green,Inc. purchased the original manufacturing equipment, and did in fact deliver it to an experienced DWHR expert in Saskatchewan to produce OUR product for us.
Please refrain from commenting on anything Swing Green, Inc., which by the way, is a manufacturer of products in the USA.