Install A Drain Water Heat Recovery Unit In Your Custom Home

Planning to build a new home in the Collingwood area? Then you will need to budget for a drain water heat recovery unit.

What is a drain water heat recovery unit?

It is basically a copper pipe that is installed in the main plumbing drain/stack that comes from your showers. The copper pipe is installed vertically and has copper tubing wrapped around it. The reason for the tubing wrapping around it is so you can connect the incoming water lines from the city water.

You then run the water lines from the other end of the tubing to your hotwater tank.

The way it works is as follows;

When you turn on your shower the hot water runs down the drain and down the plumbing stack that is now copper. The copper absorbs the heat from the hot waste water that is flowing through it and heats up. The copper tubing that is wrapped around the copper drain also heats up.

Since you have turned on the hot water for a shower that hot water starts to be removed from the hot water tank to flow to the shower, the hot water tank then starts to allow new water to be added so that it can warm it up to keep the tank full. That water flows from the municipal lines outside and is usually cold. But as the new cold water runs into the building it now runs around the heated copper pipe warming that water up.

When the new water now arrives to the hot water tank it isn't cold anymore, its actually quiet warm. The water has now been pre-heated before it entered the hot water tank.

What is the benefit of this?

Pre-heating the water that goes into the hot water tank allows the hot water tank to use less energy to keep your water to the desired temperature, this means that you save money on gas/electricity for not having to heat as much water.

It also means that you shorten the time that it takes to make hot water. So if you have a lot of people needing to tank showers then you shouldn't have to worry as much about running out of water because the water that enters the hot water tank is already warmed to a certain point.

Eventually this drain system pays for itself with the money it saves you on your energy bills.

When you are planning your new custom home ask your contractor about a drain water heat recovery unit.

Rob
Village Builders Inc.

The Next Generation Of Custom Homes Is Becoming Smaller

The size of custom homes wanted by the average person is starting to become smaller.

After talking to scores of people at the last spring cottage life show 2015 (at our booth) a trend started to emerge. More people where talking about building homes that were under 2500 sqft.

This is a dramatic change from the previous 10 years where the homes have not just gotten larger but they have also gotten more elaborate with the cost per sqft of the custom homes rising every year.

I talked to a lot of different people about building custom homes, the majority of them wanted to build a bungalow style home instead of the traditional two story design. In previous years this was usually attributed to people wanting to retire into the home and wanted to limit the amount of stairs that they would have to climb, but the people that I talked to about building bungalows this spring have ranged in age from the 70’s down to the 30’s.

There are several reasons for this change in thinking about the size of custom homes;

• Utility costs have risen so fast in the past 5 years that people are looking minimize the amount of square feet that they will have to heat and cool.

• Seniors are looking toward their golden years and they don’t want to have to climb stairs or have to clean an overly large home.

• The younger generation that are in their 30’s and 40 do not have the capital that the baby boomer generation have and so they can’t afford to build or live in larger homes.

• The younger generation has a strong belief in leaving a smaller environmental footprint, smaller homes use less resources to build and also to maintain. They also believe in a little simpler living.

• Families are smaller than they have been in the past; most families only have 1 child or possibly two. Baby boomers are empty nesters and only need a second bedroom for when guests drop by. This allows people of both generations to build homes with less bedrooms and less washrooms.

In the past people who wanted smaller homes have been content on buying track built homes (sub-division), this is starting to change. The cost of sub-division homes continues to rise with the size of the lot they are being built on getting ever smaller. What is changing is that people are starting to realize that track built homes are constructed so poorly that for a little extra money they can have a custom home that is built to a higher standard and built the way that they want it. A custom home has a higher resale value then a track built home and has the ability to have a far greater return on their investment. With custom homes being better insulated there is a savings as well on the heating and cooling costs going forward as well.

Custom home builders are ideally suited to adapt with the change as they are able to build homes from 1000 sqft to 10,000 sqft. They are also able to build a home as simple as someone wants or as elaborate as they require it to be.

Welcome to the new generation of smaller more efficient homes.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.