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shower heat exchanger

J

Jerboy

Banned
I was thinking of a heat exchanger at a shower drain can save considerably amount of energy. When we take a shower, most of the water goes down the drain without a whole lot of change in it's temperature. Some homes have a ventilation system which works by taking in outside air through one pipe and pushing indoor air through another and since the two pipes are interlinked together thermally, the incoming air is warm and outging air is cold minimizing the waste in heat.

Wouldn't it make sense to have cold water come up a pipe that is spiraled and thermally interlinked with a drain pipe that is also spiraled? In theory, the heat from waste water is recovered and absorbed by incoming cool water and minimizes the wasted heat that goes down the drain.

 
Originally posted by: Jerboy
I was thinking of a heat exchanger at a shower drain can save considerably amount of energy. When we take a shower, most of the water goes down the drain without a whole lot of change in it's temperature. Some homes have a ventilation system which works by taking in outside air through one pipe and pushing indoor air through another and since the two pipes are interlinked together thermally, the incoming air is warm and outging air is cold minimizing the waste in heat.

Wouldn't it make sense to have cold water come up a pipe that is spiraled and thermally interlinked with a drain pipe that is also spiraled? In theory, the heat from waste water is recovered and absorbed by incoming cool water and minimizes the wasted heat that goes down the drain.
Click to expand...

I want cold water coming out of my faucets. This would either heat the cold pipe or be used on the hot pipe. If you do this with the hot water pipe, I think you'd end up cooling the water more than heating it unless maybe you had the water spiralled around the hot water pipe WITH insulation between them.

If I remeber correctly, camel noses do sometime similar (the blood takes heat from the exiting air and carries it to entering air, or maybe opposite). Maybe it was some other animal.

Another interesting idea (a little related) would be to drill 10 feet down or so and drop in a large finned metal "thing" with pipes flowing through it that you use as an AC or winter heater assist depending on the soil temperature in your area.
edit: make sure to replace the soil around the fins after putting it in or you wont get much benefit at all 😉
edit2: rewrote post after misread jerboy's post
 
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