We are beginning to build a new house in very northern NY and just found out about drain water heat recovery.  Does anyone have any feed back on this?  We would have 2 bathrooms (opposite sides of the house), a laundry in the master bathroom and a dishwasher in the kitchen which would be about 15 feet or so from the master bathroom.  The second bathroom wouldn't be used much unless we have company.  Thanks.  Cathy

Hi, yes we have one from http://gfxtechnology.com/ This is actually our second, we had one in our first home as well. In both homes it raised the incoming water by about 10F while taking a shower. One key thing to do is make sure to connect the cold to the bathrooms to its output as well. Yes it will warm up you cold tap water 10F, but the added benefit from the warmer "cold" in the shower adds a lot. In our last house we started out with a single 40 gallon natural gas water heater. If I took a shower and then my wife she would run out of water, or at least it would get to the point where you had to have it all the way hot to finish the shower. After we installed it you could take three showers in a row without turning the water hotter as time went on.

In both cases we put the unit on the most used shower drain since that’s where most of our hot water usage was and skipped the kitchen / laundry drain.

When this one was installed the plumber refused to hook up the cold side to the bathrooms because it might warm up the cold water side at the sink. I saw a 12-13F increase in incoming water temp before the hot water heater. After about a month I re-plumbed it and now see a 10F rise in the incoming cold water to both the cold shower side and going in to the water heater. So it is definitely more heat recovery.

Oh we did get a $50 rebate check from the state of Wisconsin since it was listed as an energy star appliance.

I think the colder your incoming water is the faster it will pay for itself. In our last home we had a 750 foot deep well and it was 48F all year round. Now on city water we run between 50F and 60F, but 10 degrees still is a lot of BTU’s