GFX Question

kpc_22

Tie them into the cold water feed for the water heater and to the cold water feed to the shower....I don't advise the feed to the solar panels....kpc

Gasper

Is anyone familiar with GFX copper heat exchangers?

Garritt

GFX

I think I've seen them before, where are they used?

Gasper

They are cut into 8, 4", waste pipe drops in the basement of an apartment building that I'm working on. I want to tie them into a solar panel system. Owner wants to pick up any btu's he can for domestic-shower/dishwasher/sink water. Trying to figure out how to pipe them together.

jp_2

search the wall for

GFX, you should find a lot of reading.

Gasper

Controlls?????????

What about controls?

kpc_22

no controls needed....

Gasper

Makes no sense. If only cold water is going down the stack, they will then cool the water in the coils. Sounds counter productive to me. Has to be more to it.

Unknown

The units work best with balanced flow. ie. when the volume of water moving in the stack and coil are equal. For this reason they are often piped such that the cold as well as the dhw feed water is sent thru the coil.

The device only works when hot water is being dumped, but the cold travels thru the coil regardless, If someone was dumping hot water at the same time as you were desiring a cold glass of water this could be a minor issue.

It's a viable option to only temper the DHW feed if tis is a concern.

The unit really only works with water draws that involve simultaneous dumping. Tubs, washing machines,and dishwashers don't get much if any benefit.

Larry Weingarten

A possibility...

... is to tie them into the shower drain and run that preheated water into the solar tank. I would not attempt to combine GFX with flow to the collectors. Another way to deal with it is to simply run cold into the GFX and from there go to the cold side of the shower. This will warm the cold side, reducing the need for hot. It's much less piping and less heat loss that way.

As Scott says, they need similar amounts of water flowing up and down at the same time to be able to do any good. Showers are a good application.

Yours, Larry

Unknown

Larry to clarify, my understanding, the balanced flow is achieved by feeding both the hot and the cold from the gfx. This insures that regardless of what is happening at the shower mixing valve all of the water going down the drain made it thru the gfx.

Direct solar DHW is an interesting option for non freezing climates where water quality is good. Apparently there are lots of instals like this in florida that work well. I'm thinking with the price of copper in a climate like this solar may be a better investment than GFX, with Floridas solar resources GFX might be redundant in a solar DHW system. It makes a lot of sense up north though, here it's the low lying fruit of dhw savings if you ask me, very under utilized.

Unknown

oops