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Have you heard of drainwater heat recovery? One of the side benefits is dramatically improving the recovery rate of your water heater. (Unfortunately it doesn'

by ip26 8y ago

Have you heard of drainwater heat recovery? One of the side benefits is dramatically improving the recovery rate of your water heater. (Unfortunately it doesn't work well with certain plumbing layouts, and the rising price of copper has reduced the cost effectiveness)

mrclark411 8y ago
Just moved into our "forever" home and our setup is very similar to isbjorn16's (7 in the family, HPWH "80G", but I have an 8" PowerPipe from these folks: http://renewability.com/#learn-more http://renewability.com/#learn-more. (It's a monster - plumber wanted to give me a clean out at the bottom - but that meant some jackhammering to set it low enough.) So far so good - we do a bunch of baths/showers at bed time and no one runs out of hot water. Also - I'll add that we accidentally had the plumber remove all the low flow "plugs" from the showers so there's a lot of water flowing. The pipe is pretty fun - not only is it fun to look at - but when someone is taking a shower it's fun to feel the heat at the top of the pipe and as you move down the pipe it gets colder until it reaches the temp of the cold water coming into the house. Since it was new construction - we'll never know how much of a different the drainwater heat recovery pipe is making - but it is definitely doing work. I can imagine these pipes becoming more popular (though rising prices will kill off any efficiencies real fast). Maybe code?
isbjorn16 8y ago
I have not! https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/water-heating/drain-water-heat-recovery https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/water-heating/drain-water... seemed to make a fair amount of sense for me, so if anyone else is curious, there's a link! My plumbing layout actually might be darn near ideal for this. I'm not super keen on spending another thousand or so on getting it installed - at least not prior to the "planned but not scheduled" bathroom remodel, but that is at least worth considering when we do do the major remodel and complete bathroom reconfiguration. Our master bath is on the first floor and we don't have a finished basement so making something like this work should be comparatively easy. Thanks for the idea!
- ip26 8y ago
  FWIW they aren't difficult to do yourself, as long as you can sweat pipe. It's a very simple device after all.

by ip26 8y ago

mrclark411 8y ago

Just moved into our "forever" home and our setup is very similar to isbjorn16's (7 in the family, HPWH "80G", but I have an 8" PowerPipe from these folks: http://renewability.com/#learn-more http://renewability.com/#learn-more. (It's a monster - plumber wanted to give me a clean out at the bottom - but that meant some jackhammering to set it low enough.) So far so good - we do a bunch of baths/showers at bed time and no one runs out of hot water. Also - I'll add that we accidentally had the plumber remove all the low flow "plugs" from the showers so there's a lot of water flowing. The pipe is pretty fun - not only is it fun to look at - but when someone is taking a shower it's fun to feel the heat at the top of the pipe and as you move down the pipe it gets colder until it reaches the temp of the cold water coming into the house. Since it was new construction - we'll never know how much of a different the drainwater heat recovery pipe is making - but it is definitely doing work. I can imagine these pipes becoming more popular (though rising prices will kill off any efficiencies real fast). Maybe code?

isbjorn16 8y ago

I have not! https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/water-heating/drain-water-heat-recovery https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/water-heating/drain-water... seemed to make a fair amount of sense for me, so if anyone else is curious, there's a link! My plumbing layout actually might be darn near ideal for this. I'm not super keen on spending another thousand or so on getting it installed - at least not prior to the "planned but not scheduled" bathroom remodel, but that is at least worth considering when we do do the major remodel and complete bathroom reconfiguration. Our master bath is on the first floor and we don't have a finished basement so making something like this work should be comparatively easy. Thanks for the idea!

ip26 8y ago
FWIW they aren't difficult to do yourself, as long as you can sweat pipe. It's a very simple device after all.