I'm looking for DWHE and I've seen GFXtechnology and power-pipe mentioned on this website before.
I came across one called Drainergy at this site: http://web.mac.com/winstonworks/http%3A__www.inventure.ca/Drainergy.html

Are there other companies that make DWHE and are available here in the US? I spoke to the local coop and they are working on a program for these for next year, and if approved there could be up to a $300 rebate to install one of these, and right now they are not planning on restrict it to any specific brand or type.

I'd like a good quality product that will be worth the investment, but some of these websites look iffy, and I'd like to do my homework on this type of product before I buy.

Any help? Anyone have one installed? If so, what brand? and how do you like the product and the company?

Thanks.

MA based EFI distributes PowerPipe in the US (from their WI warehouse.)  EFI is a reasonable outfit to deal with over the phone, they don't mark up shipping costs, and ship promptly.  (Your plumber or coop can probably open an account with them to get the wholesale price.) http://www.efi.org/wholesale/pdfs/power_pipe.pdf

In Canada you can buy (PowerPipe from that orange box-store, but at a more retail kind of price.)

IIRC Retherm will sell direct-retail to US customers:

http://www.retherm.com/

  http://www.retherm.com/ProductsAndPricing.htm

Ecoinnovation may sell direct too (worth asking).  Their newly released Thermodrain isn't (yet) listed by NRCAN, but they're claiming ~51% steady-state numbers (yet to be verified by 3rd parties), at a favorable price relative to some of the competition:  http://www.ecoinnovation.ca/en/residential.html  (This would be a price/performance improvement over their earlier ECO-GFX line, which are NRCAN listed, independently tested.)  IIRC the one-off price for the Thermodrain is in the CDN$500-550  range.

GFXtechnology in NY seems to be selling Watercycles-manufactured product in the US, but accuses (most? all?) competitors of patent infringement in much the same way as Ecoinnovation screams about Renewability's PowerPipe labeling faux pas:

http://www.gfxtechnology.com/VGFX.html


I've never heard of Drainergy, but the look of it I'm not convinced it's heat exchange is inherently as effective as the slinky-wrap designs like the EcoGFX/PowerPipe/Retherm/Watercycles, etc.  Without independently verified test data I'm skeptical of their numbers. 

Call me conservative, but without a very compelling story it's probably better to stick with NRCAN listed third-party tested models or companies and buy on price/performance, and let the industry insider screamers fight it out on their own- these are first-world countries, with first-world legal systems, after all...  (I'm happy enough with the flow capacity & apparent-performance of the PowerPipe installed at my house- neither know nor care about the details of competitor-alleged agency labeling issues.  It's not my fight.  NRCAN stands behind the performance numbers.)

Thanks Dana for the great info.

A question about using DWHE when you have a water softener and/or a whole house water purification system (like kinetico, etc).
I was thinking that you'd want to pipe the softener/purifier before the DWHE if you're piping the whole house cold water supply through the DWHE. Otherwise that hot water from DWHE would have to go through the softener tank, and I'd think you'd want that going directly to the water heater and rest of the house. Am I thinking right?

Putting the softener before the DWHE (and everything else in the house) is the right thing to do. Scale/lime buildup on the potable water side would reduce it's heat exchange efficiency over time, and the water softener will reduce that issue dramatically.  (Hard water is another reason to avoid tankless systems, since de-scaling the heat exchanger on tankless units becomes an annual maintenance chore to keep it up to snuff. They can go decades without it in soft/very-soft water areas though.)