There’s a few places that use the water runoff from a nuclear power plant to provide hot water or heating to surrounding homes. Apparently they only have a lose about 3% of the heat and can supply a 100km area.
Comment on New idea
person420@lemmynsfw.com 2 days agoI’m more curious how a hot water main works? Is there just millions of miles of heated pipes underground? And I thought a gas boiler was inefficient.
saigot@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Any time you want hot water, you need to wait for all of the water between your house and the heating facility to drain before you get hot water. It can help to coordinate with your neighbours.
lemonSqueezy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Wait. That’s a different problem than hot water just from my basement. The basement is slow, but has nothing to do with neighbors. I think we live in different countries.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The mains are shared with your neighbours, so a hot water main would also be shared with neighbours. So just like running the hot water in the bathroom sink before a shower means hot water gets to the shower quicker, with hot water mains, your neighbour having a hot shower before you means you’ll see hot water sooner.
Though my country does not have hot water mains. I wouldn’t be surprised if the heat losses are enough that even sharing a water heater between unattached neighbours is less efficient than both using their own heaters, let alone a whole city doing that. Though maybe tropical areas could do it.