Wanderings

This is an interesting idea. It is designed to heat up water going to the hot water heater by extracting heat from waste water. Basically, when your dishwasher is flushing hot water down the drain, the heat exchanger is grabbing the heat and pre-heating the water going to your hot water heater. It is a simple and easy to recreate design. Ward is putting these together and selling them on the internet.

He says that he’s selling a version that he has modified to fit most waste pipes for $275 plus shipping. They go for around $500 on eBay. He says there is an amazingly good ROI. He’ll have a web page up soon.

You can contact Ward about it at

Oh boy, I think I might get plumbing stuff for Christmas.

My brother Ward, who lives up in Rochester, NY, sent me pictures.

He has a new cat named Dixie. She was abandoned at his father-in-law’s farm. She is extremely affectionate. I love brown tabby cats with golden eyes. She is beautiful.

His garage burned down a year or so ago and he has finally started working on his new garage. At 24 feet by 30 feet, it is bigger than my house.

He is digging the footings and foundation with his toy tractor. I wish I had one of those babies, I would find something to dig.

He told me on the telephone that he recently stacked 6 cords of Black Locust in his cellar for his word burning stove. I am jealous. Black Locust is the best wood for heating a house.

Erica just bought us a cord of wood, which I stacked in the driveway to make it easy to get at when it snows. It is a mixed bag of hardwoods like maple, oak, beech and ash, but with an occasional red pine and a few billets of cedar. I don’t mind the cedar – I’ll save it for Christmas and use it as a yule log. It smells wonderful when it burns. The red pine, though, burns as fast as paper and doesn’t give off much heat.