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holding tanks
Tom,
Just a thought, but it might help. How hot does you water get and have you checked your mixing valve lately. I was having trouble with hot water and running out too quickly. I adjusted the mixing valve and since the water has been hotter (not too hot) and we don't run out. In my case we have some silt in the water so the valve had gotten plugged up. It is also possible that you are getting too much cold water mixed back in with the hot water from the boiler. This would waste hot water quickly. A simple thermometer check would tell what temp your hot water is.
Good luck
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holding tanks
Mostly I'm just starting to react to rapid increases in electrical rates by thinking of ways to improve efficiency. Things work OK and there's enough hot water. We keep it not especially hot, and with the extra fiber glass bats around the tank we can still turn off the heater for several days and come back to a hot shower.
I think my alternatives are: a better heater; different fuel; or waste heat recovery. I think of the original passive holding tank idea as one that would take extra heat out of the basement mostly generated by solar load or oil furnace operation. It's mostly an alternative fuel idea.
A coil around the furnace probably is a more active version of the alternative fuel idea. It would be tempting to use the flue pipe, but our medium efficiency furnace already takes enough energy out the flue gases that the top of the chimney builds up frost during very cold weather. That's a problem in it's own right.
A wood fired supplement seems like a pretty good idea, and wood can be cheap here. Outdoor wood furnaces are expensive but insurance companies like them. My brother in law recently installed a second wood stove. His insurance company has a list of approved stoves and wanted to inspect the installation themselves. Our own stove bit the dust when we discovered the chimney had to be replaced. The cost of running a new outside chimney from the basement to above the roofline wasn't a pretty penny, and stoves in basements don’t work that well anyway.
I wonder if Sedora stove is what some friends bought a few years ago. He described the stove as designed so it re-burns flue gases. Whether its the same design or not, he really likes the stove. I don't know how the addition of heat exchangers to do something like heat water might effect the efficiency of these fancy stoves.
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One of the small things that you can do to improve efficiency is to have the hot water water inlet exchange with the outlet on the shower.
Although I ran the house in PEX (crosslinked polyethylene) we spliced in a coil of copper around the shower drain pipe. This allows the inlet water to pick up some of the waste heat flowing out of the shower.
Naturally this requires two this, access to the shower drain in the basement and constant use of the shower.
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Ahhh!!!!!!thermo dynamics. I had a stepson who was taking this class at purdue.....it drove him nuts!!!! He passed. I fondly remember helping him....it was one of the first times he and I really put our heads together. I had no formal education, but had alot of expeirience with refrigeation and also accurately metering anhydrous ammonia in corn fields. but him and I pulled it off.
One of the first things I realized about thermo dynamics was the fact that every bet is hedged and there are never any really clear cut answers. I know...this gives you no advice...this is just a thank you for helping me remember some of the best days of my life.
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I did find a commercial heat exchange product for shower drains a few years ago. I think it's is called GFX something or another. I checked my bookmark but the page isn't on the net any longer.
As I recall, the product needs a minimum 5' vertical drop between the shower and drain. The unit appeared to be a fairly large diameter vertical copper pipe with standard water pipe coiled along its length. Info on the site said that efficiency of the unit is due to the fact that waste water going down the vertical will swirl around the inside surface thus improving the heat exchange. There also was an explanation that the unit is more efficient if it's installed in the main water feed rather than the water heater feed line. There was an explanation, but I never understood the logic.
I never became too interested in the product because our shower is shower and water heater are in a shallow part of the basement where there isn't 5' clearance above the drain. I also figured that I'd have to talk my wife into taking showers rather than baths for the idea to be worthwhile. I believe I'd rather pay the electrical bills.
I also thought about holding tanks for gray-water and active exchangers but I never got past the cost of the equipment.
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04-22-2002, 12:30 
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