Major appliances are major energy drains, and if you have a traditional, tank-based hot water heater it can be a major factor in your monthly utilities bills.
Haier's Power Pad promises to make those things have less of an impact on people's finances -- at least when it comes to showers. It's a heat exchanger that you stand on whilst washing that man right out of your hair, water running off your toned body and through the vanes in the Pad, warming the cold water that's pumped through it. That water is then deposited into the hot water tank, which now has a little less work to do. Haier is hoping to get this to market in China within the next two months for ¥4,000 (about $600) and, by that time, boost its efficiency to 30 percent. That's still 10 percent lower than the
EcoDrain we spied last year, but we have a more practical concern: what happens when that thing gets clogged with hair and various bathing products? It doesn't look
particularly easy to clean.
posted August 2nd 2010 9:59AM
How is it that nobody has pointed out that a ¥4,000 product is only $60 American?
From the article: "...traditional, tank-based hot water heater..."
Filed under the pedantic category: I don't have a "hot water heater" as I find no need to heat water that is already hot. I have a water heater. :-)
Couldn't you do the same thing, much easier just by capturing the head from the pipes? Use a nice copper pipe for the drain and then coil cold water pipes around that. As long as the run is long enough you should get the same effect without have some goofy platform thats just going to clog up.
@shaka999 Good idea. Though it would be much more difficult to retrofit into any existing installation than just putting the Haier pad into your shower.
I have just bought a heat-pump water heater for $700. I think it would save me much more energy cost than this thing.
The concept of extracting heat energy out of hot waste water has been tried before. It's not a new idea and makes a lot of sense. you paid dearly for that hot water and it is wasteful to allow it bounce off your body for a second before going down the drain. The problem is, local code restrictions will never allow waste water to be just a thin (probably copper) membrane away from potable water. Even though a leak in the membrane would only result in 40 psi street pressure water to spray out and go down the drain. Gray water at 0 psi would never pass into a 40 psi system.