I had a great idea for recovering all the btu's which normally just go down the drain. I did a little search on google, and found out that a company STOLE my idea--almost twenty years before I had it! Check it out:

http://oikos.com/gfx/index.html

Here's some similar ideas:

Bury supply pipes deep enough to have warmer water into house (save many kwh per year)

Wrap a “coil”, which can be square, actually, using oversize pipe to minimize friction loss, on top of septic tank, cover with rigid insulation, make sure that septic tank area has foolproof drainage to avoid cross contamination. Preheats water supply, saving big $$

Put manifold, pipes, in or under slab construction, and run cold water through it. Cools slab, warms irrigation water. Also, run main supply pipe through slab to preheat water to water heater, etc.

Run drain pipe from house alongside supply pipe (again, provide drainage protection to prevent cross contamination)

Run drainpipe alongside underground pipes of ground source heat pump.

These are very preliminary ideas; some of them will require some valving in oreder to utilize them only in the appropriate seasons..

Obviously, most of them are more practical for new construction.

Gotta go,

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), August 07, 2001

Answers

In light of the overwhelming enthusiasm I got from this post, here''s another one:

Divert your water heater supply line through three hundred feet of one inch black poly pipe. Poly pipe should be on the roof, preferably, or in any sunny location.

The poly pipe gets very hot in very short order in sunny weather, and essentially eliminates any power consumption when you use hot water during the day.

Do this in non freezing seasons only.

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), August 09, 2001.

Hi Joe, I read your first post with interest the same day it was posted but didn't post a reply. Sorry. :-( My DH and I both try to save energy every way possible. When we first got our land we put a small travel trailer on the property to stay in when we came up on the weekends. We didn't have electric yet (of course) so DH took a large brown plastic drum and set it on a raised platform. He plumbed it to the hot water supply line. We loved having the warm water always available at no cost. Now that we have our mobile home set we're going to use the black pipe system that you mentioned. We'll be putting the hose right on the roof but haven't figured out yet how we'll attach it to keep it from blowing around in the fierce winds we get here. Any ideas would be appreciated.

-- Grannytoo (jacres40@hotmail.com), August 10, 2001.

Hi, Grannytoo,

Glad you responded. I was not feeling bad about no responses, just surprises. And I'm an ex class clown, always kidding around, still as a grandpa. (The kids love it)

Although the pipe will undoubtedly take longer to heat up, I would suggest you just put a three hundred foot roll of the poly up on the roof. If it's full of water, I doubt seriously that it will blow off, since it will have about a hundred pounds of water in it, plus the weight of the pipe. If it's windy enough to blow that off the roof, you could: 1) easily tie down the roll; much easier than mounting the pipe if it's unrolled, and 2)buy wind generator!

Let me know how it works out, ok? My son keeps saying he's going to do this, but keeps procrastinating.

I don't do this, because I have a "regular" solar water heating system, with hot water 24 hours a day, in warm weather.

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), August 10, 2001.

Hi Joe, We will let you know how the poly pipe works. When we lived in Tucson we bought one hundred feet of dark green water hose (couldn't find black) and just snaked it back and forth across our carport roof. It worked great. We actually turned the breaker for the water heater off and forgot about it. When we sold the house we got a frantic call from the new buyers saying that the water heater didn't work. Once DH explained about our hose system they did the same thing. We don't have constant winds here but have some real strong winds during our monsoon season.

-- Grannytoo (jacres40@hotmail.com), August 10, 2001.

JOJ: Do you think having the waterheater in the basement, then putting the hose out the window and up the side of the house to the roof would present a problem? We have an electric water heater (no choice there, can't put a propane one in the basement with codes here), and the electric utility is a coop, so really expensive. Sure would be nice to be able to leave the black pipe up there throughout the winter! Jan

-- Jan in Co (Janice12@aol.com), September 03, 2001.

As long as you've got the poly pipe in line with the intake pipe to the water heater, and it isn't in a place where it will freeze, it will work. The basement water heater won't be a problem

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), September 17, 2001.

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-- anil kumar (anilsd9@yahoo.co.in), November 07, 2001.