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
It may not be the same everywhere but there are a few ways you can do this.
You can circulate water in a loop, not a straight pipe, so it comes back to be re-heated if it isn’t used immediately. This is how tall apartment buildings and hotels keep hot water immediately available on top floors.
You could also put some sort of heater in distant locations. This could be electricity though that can be expensive/inefficient. More likely it would be gas, another way you could do it is sending steam out from the same plant that originally heated the water, but this doesn’t necessarily make things any cheaper or easier vs running a loop and re-heating the water as necessary.
The pipes would also be insulated of course. Water actually holds an enormous amount of heat energy so if there is no easy path for a lot of heat to quickly escape, the water is going to stay hot for a while.
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