Heating water is one of the most energy-intensive processes in the household, and most of the energy that is used to heat water is wasted as the water flows down the drain. While heat exchangers have existed for a while, many of them require lots of space and are hard to install. EcoDrain tries to make them more accessible by designing a heat exchanger specifically for the most energy-intensive use of water in households: showering. The EcoDrain system is claimed to save up to 45% of heating energy, transferring it to incoming cold freshwater to reduce the need for energy to heat up the water. They have since used the technology to improve conventional heat exchangers and develop a system to be employed in commercial kitchens to capture the energy from dishwashing.

The cost of energy required to heat water is one of the biggest energy expenditures at home, right after ambient cooling and heating. 80 to 90% of the energy used to heat water in our homes ends up being sent right down the drain. This is a major loss of energy occurring in pretty much every single building across a city. While waste heat recovery has been an existing concept for a while, it has largely been considered not viable on a personal scale because of the high costs of installation. This means that currently, large amounts of energy are lost in homes in every city, increasing the amount of heating energy a city needs to provide and the environmental impact its households have.

EcoDrain is a heat exchanger specifically designed to insert into showers even after the construction of the shower. The design of the unit solves the major problem of heat recovery, the complicated installation process, by shrinking the unit and allowing it to be installed both with less space and with less effort. Its application focuses on showering, which is generally the most energy-intensive activity people regularly do in their home. The device captures hot water and uses it to pre-heat incoming cold freshwater, leaving the water heater with less effort to do.