Re:Heat Pumps Work Miracles
by henrikschroder on Thursday February 28, 2019 @05:11PM
(#19275770)
A similar idea that's somewhat popular in Sweden is to add a heat-exchanger between outgoing sewer water and incoming tap water. You don't need to put fins into the outgoing water, it's simply a piece of regular straight copper pipe, but it's thicker, and the incoming water pipe coils around it a bit.
No need to muck around with fins in the sewage, or trying to convert to electricty, simply heating the incoming water a degree or two saves energy for your water heater.
Here are some calculations suggesting that the numbers simply don't add up for ground-source heat pumps at urban population densities: https://www.withouthotair.com/c21/page_152.shtml