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EcoVea: A Shower that Recycles

By Rain Noe - October 13, 2011

in Sustainable Design

I associate business trips and hotel rooms with long showers. When you grow up with a lot of siblings or in an apartment building with apartment-sized water heaters, you learn to take nothing but short showers, because there's always someone outside going "You better save me some hot water."

Even in a hotel, though, I feel guilty about letting the water run for too long; endless hot water aside, it's wasteful. So I'm hoping the Ecovea shower system by Reveeco sees some uptake. Promising a savings of up to 80% on both water and energy, the Ecovea system recycles water for immediate reuse, letting you shower in a sort of guilt-free loop of the same water.

I know that sounds potentially gross, but the manufacturer claims that the recycled water is "sometimes even cleaner than the source water from the supply system."

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Pascal

13 years ago

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Hi Stick & Tom,

Your concerns are normal and I think it should be addressed :

The EcoVea dumps the recirculating water then the user is finished. More than that, there is a quick, automatic cleaning cycle that activates in order to drain/disinfect the pipes. The system NEVER stores any water between uses.

Also - The shower provides a UV treatment to kill all bacteria. The system's design makes it quite unlikely that particles get sheltered in corrosion particles (the cleaning cycle at the end of the shower would kill them anyway).

Cheers,

Pascal Routhier, Reveeco
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Tom

13 years ago

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Sharp observation about Legionella, Stick. The below is from Wikipedia's page on Legionellosis. Surely the shower could be modified as such to take care of this problem. Additionally, the wiki page says that their ideal growth is in warm stagnant water, so the shower would do best to dump the recirculating water when the user is finished.
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Legionella bacteria themselves can be inactivated by UV light. However, Legionella bacteria that grow and reproduce in amoebae or that are sheltered in corrosion particles cannot be killed by UV light alone. An innovative way is the combination of ultrasonics and UVC light. This uses a two-stage process, where ultrasonic cavitation disrupts the amoebae or corrosion particles and leaves the Legionella bacteria exposed for UV radiation. Such combined system are used for example in hot water systems in sensitive areas, such as hospitals, where the inhabitants are more vulnerable than in normal environments.
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Additionally, the wiki page says that their ideal growth is in warm stagnant water, so the shower would do best to dump the recirculating water when the user is finished.

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The Stick

13 years ago

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Think you'll have a Legionella pneumophila problem with that.
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tom de vrieze

13 years ago

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reminds me at the ventra shower of pieter demul,
who has won the james dyson young award with it in 2006
http://www.bloggen.be/3iothomasdegraeve/archief.php?ID=226391

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