収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

I never did write up a final followup report on the clothes dryer heat recovery system, did I? A writeup on Version 3.2, which I promised over a year ago when writing up Version 3.1.

Well: it works! It works really well, honestly. The house is more comfortable with a little more retained humidity in the winter but never gets at at all damp – if anything, what we need is more humidity reclamation, not less.

We also successfully reclaim a noticeable amount of heat, same notation. I don’t have any reason to change my numbers, so it even works out to a net operational profit! It even saves money, on top of everything else.

It really does all just work. We got to use it from November until May’s heat wave, even longer than we did last year, thanks to last winter’s particular weather. The very minor strengthening was all it needed, though honestly I’m not sure it needed even that.

The way to “close” it for summer pressure testing turned out to be really simple: a thin sheet of cooking silicone cut to the right size, slipped inside the door to cover the filter intake, held in place by the friction of the door itself and air pressure. It worked perfectly; we had no sign of leakage, the rigid air ducts I used to connect it to the dryer and outside vent never built up abnormal amounts of lint, in short: the pressure testing over summer showed no issues.

Once actively in use this past winter I cleaned it weekly, but I could’ve easily cleaned it every second or third week, based on the amount of lint build-up on the inside of the filter. The furnace filter is still good and can still be used again for another year, no question; I think the charcoal should be replaced more than once a winter, since we did get more laundry smell over time.

Which gets me to why I’m probably not really likely to reinstall it this coming autumn.

Over winter, one of my housemates switched back to scented laundry supplies. They did so for specific reasons which are pretty reasonable, honestly. I couldn’t even criticise it if I wanted to. But… even with the charcoal filter layer, those scents started becoming more and more of a presence. Most of the time just in the laundry room, but when their laundry was drying it’d creep out to other parts of the house, and even when it wasn’t their laundry, you’d still get some of the smell just from accumulated build-up inside the vents.

And I don’t like those scents. I use unscented laundry supplies for reasons. It’s not nasty or something, but it’s artificial and perfumey and I just really dislike it. On clothing, the amount left behind is hardly noticeable – but in the air, it really kinda is.

So in the end: this is a solved problem. Version 3.2 works and works well. I have no meaningful new notes or plans version a version 3.3, much less a version 4, because… it’s done! It works! It saves money and energy and helps keep the house from getting too dry in the winter and it’s low maintenance and safe! It’s genuinely quite nice!

Unless if you have people using scented laundry supplies, and you don’t like the scents. Then… it’s not as nice.

You never know. Maybe I’ll reinstall it anyway. Try changing the charcoal layer every month or something nuts like that. Particularly if it starts getting really really dry, come January.

We’ll see.

eta: This post includes a bunch of photos showing the design. This is of Version 3, but the only differences between versions 3 and version 3.2 are more bolts tying everything together better. Refinements, not replacements. Air comes in the right side, mostly goes out the front panel, excess pressure goes out the left and out of the building, and that’s also the safety release in case somehow everyone forgets to clean the system for several months.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.