Hello everyone, recently my city has been doing some repairs to the city’s hot water system and i was without hot water for about 3 weeks.
That got me wondering, how exactly does this work? I read something about a heating agent but i don’t know what that means. And how does the water stay hot while travelling from the place it gets heated to our homes?
Thanks!
In: 25
I would be suppised if there is any city that has a system that delivers centrally heated water to your faucet.
What is done is there is a distinct heating system with warm water that circulates. It will be used in the heat exchanger to heat up cold water delivered to your house to the warm water you get out of the faucet.
The first problem is to have an efficient system that water that is just below boiling temperature. I would be too hot for a hot water tap.
The second is you like to have as clean water as possible in the pipe to avoid corrosion and deposition of solids. It would be costly if you clean water to that degree all the time because people use it. It is also common to have a die in the water so leaks are simpler to detect.
If you turn on the hot water it will likely flow just like in the past but be cold because there is no hot water in the heat exchange that heats it up.
The heating in your house will likely use the district heating system too. It will also use heat exchange and there is no mixing of water.
A heat exchange is simple in that the water is thermal but not physical contact. Take a bucket and fill it with cold water. Then take a metallic pipe that goes into the bucket but exits it to. Let the pipe be a spiral to increase the length of it in the buck. If you pump hot water through the pipe it will heat up the water in the bucket without mixing. There are better designs with more contact are and less waste but they are still just metal that conducts heat between the two liquids, no moving part is needed.
The hole system is water is simply pumped around in pipes with insulation around them. There will be some energy loss in the system but not that much. The pipe looks something like https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fj%C3%A4rrv%C3%A4rme#/media/Fil:CrNi-Stahl-Wellrohrflex_60_126.jpg
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