It’s true that not only the water, but the heat in it can be recycled. I’ll check out the site you referenced — thanks.

I live in the Boston area — we get perhaps four months when the water would help our plants, four months of rain, and another four months during which such water would be creating a lovely ice sculpture in our garden :-) I wonder if the water could be diverted for use in flushing the toilet instead? A gray-water system like this can be a good way to conserve.

Getting the heat out is also a relatively solvable problem. In the winter, when the air is dry, we make sure not to use the exhaust fan when showering, and instead let the warm steamy air into the house. I have also heard mention of heat exchangers that are fitted on drain pipes, but never found them available.

I use a low-flow shower head (either the High-Sierra or Oxygenics models I have reviewed) which provides a nice shower using about 1-1/4 gallons per minute, and keep the water temperature on my water heater set to 115°. So it’s pretty easy to know how much hot water I use: 5 gallons of heated water for my 4 minute shower, a little less if I turn off the water while soaping up. This is about half what a regular (2.5 GPM) showerhead uses, and probably about 1/2 the length of a “typical” shower.

Thanks for the lead!

Tom