Sustainable Building Products Are Great, But Lack Sex Appeal
I just had a wonderful talk with Tina Vasile, CEO of Swing Green, purveyor of heat exchangers of various types. The company’s expanding, and that’s good, but Tina and I agree that it’s sometimes hard to get people excited about a set of technologies that are so “unsexy.” People tend to want some big, conspicuous thing on their roof generating clean electricity and making their electric meter run backwards, not a coil of pipe underneath the floor of their bathroom, cost-effectively but invisibly recapturing some of the heat from their shower water.
I’m not sure exactly what to do about that, except to persevere. Tina and her team are talking to engineers, architects, government purchasing agencies – all the right people; if they stick with it, I know they’ll succeed.
Efficiency is more important than generating capability. The more efficient we are the less energy we need and by extension the less generating capability and equipment is needed. I certainly hope this is successful because it works great for me. You would not believe the difference it makes. Even the Department of Energy recommends the idea so I have a hard time imagining why it would be such a hard sell to the government.
http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/drain-water-heat-recovery
For those who might want to see my installation, here are some pictures.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/mydhe.html
The water heater has been changed since these were taken because it was old and failed. I was able to replace the 50 gallon heater with a 40 gallon heater and my wife and I can still take back to back showers with no problem and I mean one of us turns the water off and the other turns it right on.
Brian