spudwrench

I saw this today on a garage forum when they were discussing grey water. So far, I haven't found a link. Here goes,a section of 2" copper pipe with a coil inside. This section is cut into the shower drain to use the warmed waste water to temper the incoming cold water to your water heater. Sort of a heat exchanger? Now, I refer drain work to people that refer plumbing to me but be warned, look out for this kind of stuff.

Protech

Fail! Must be double walled with visible leak detection.

There are some legal ones that have the potable coil on the outside of the drain line. Not a very good ROI but I put them in if some green nut/hippy is willing to pay.

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nhmaster3015

Don't dismiss this whole "grey water recycling" stuff. I know that for up plumbers the whole notion of having nasty water any where near potable water is repugnant and against our nature. That said, there is a crap load of money to be made here. Imagine that someone is looking for proposals for say a 200 bed rest home facility. Then imagine that your company is the only bidder that puts grey water recycling on the table. Grey water recycling can save the faciltiy thousands on water bills and water heating costs if done properly and the best thing is that you get to sell and install the equipment. Don't be afraid of this new technology. It could turn out to be a huge profit center for you.

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Redwood

I think you might have misunderstood what they were talking about...

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Protech

I think that they only way that they will have a positive ROI would be to run them like an differential controlled solar system with the heat recovery coils used in place of solar collectors. When you factor in the poor performance of the current passive designs and the initalcost, I just don't see it paying for itself.

I suppose 2 alternate designs:

multi-coil, point of use heaters design
-the original non-green design was to use an electric resistance heater as the fuel source.
- install a heat recovery coil on each hot water fixture that preheats with the recovered heat a point of use temperature modulating tankless electric heater serving the same fixture.
-passive design, high initial cost.
-no standby and low startup/shutdown losses with exellent heat recovery fraction.
-reliability thru redundancy

central variable speed pump design, multi coil
-just about any central heater of any fuel source can be used.
-Install a variable speed circulation pump with zone valves going to the recovery coils and a pre-heat tank (or plumb to the bottom of a thermocline combo tank).
-active design, possibly lower initial cost depending on the primary heater chosen.
-higher standby and startup/shutdown losses with lower heat recovery fraction.
-Possibly higher overall savings if a cheaper non-electric resistance fuel source is available (solar, geothermal heat pump, air source heat pump, natural gas)
-Highly flexible and integratable design.

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Plumber, Repiping, Replumbing, Leak Detection, Solar Water Heater, Drain Cleaner, Pipe Leak, Polk County Plumber, Lakeland Plumber, Winter Haven Plumber, Haines City Plumber, Bartow Plumber