Drain Water Heater Recovery Keeps Your Heating Bucks From Going Down the Drain – Sobieski Services | DE, NJ, PA, MD

Drain Water Heater Recovery Keeps Your Heating Bucks From Going Down the Drain

It’s takes a lot of energy to heat the water in your home, and unfortunately, in a conventional storage water heating system, a lot of that energy goes down the drain. Hot water waste may account for as much as 90 percent of the energy used to heat water in your home. Fortunately, drain water heater recovery systems reclaim much of that energy and put heated waste-water to good use.

How Drain Water Heater Recovery Works

The heat exchanger in drain water recovery systems reclaims heat from hot water used in baths, showers, sinks, laundry machines and dishwashers. They come with the ability to store reclaimed heat, in units with storage capacity, for later use when it isn’t immediately needed. Recovery systems without storage functions are only effective when there’s a simultaneous flow of hot and cold water such as when showering. Compatible with most types of water heaters, drain water heater recovery systems with storage ability are sometimes equipped with tanks filled with clean water.

Drainage water flows through a spiral tube located at the bottom of the storage tank, warming the water inside, which then rises to the top. Drain water heater recovery systems without storage capacity are commonly equipped with a copper heat exchanger. This exchanger replaces a portion of a main waste drain. When warm water drains, cold water flows down a copper tube that’s tightly wrapped around the copper heat exchanger, preheating incoming cold water that then runs into a water heater or household fixture such as a bathtub.

When cold water is preheated using a drain water heater recovery system, heating capacity is increased, which is especially helpful in homes with undersized water heaters. In some cases, you can lower the water heating temperature in your home without affecting capacity, improving energy efficiency in the process.

For more information on drain water recovery systems, or to install a drain water heater in your home, contact Sobieski Services today. Our goal is to help educate our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC & plumbing systems).

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