Human Heated Buildings

Recently I have been pondering the possibility of using human heat to warm up houses and offices. Don’t start picturing people running around in circles and breathing more to heat up the room. I’m talking about the natural heat that humans produce. This idea is best explained by looking at Stockholm railway station. The thousands of commuters that pass through its high ceiling-ed halls, rushing for trains and working up a sweat elbowing other suits and tourists out the way, generate quite a high temperature. This air gets sucked out the station and whizzed next door through insulated tubes where it is used to boil up some water. This hot H20 gets pumped around the neighbouring offices via the radiators. Bam, human heated buildings. The system reduces the office energy bills by a rather sizeable 25%.

Fantastic, so what next? We need places that produce enough heat to make it worthwhile.  PING!  Energy saving lightbulb flicks on over head. The gym. The hottest, sweatiest room that we ever go in (if of course we actually go). The heat produced in gyms surely could get sucked out and, in Stockholm style, be redirected and turned into central heating for somewhere considerably cooler.

In Redditch this week plans have been announced for transferring the substantial heat, up to 800 degrees C, from the crematorium toheat the swimming pool next door. Currently the incinerators breath this heat into the air, losing forever the energy and all its heating possibilities.

Sounds like a perfect solution doesn’t it? People doing what they’re constantly being told to do; saving energy, reducing their carbon footprint, making a difference. But wait a minute, there is that one little rule that I’ve overlooked. You must save energy, reduce your carbon footprint and make a difference but, the decree I forgot, it must not be ‘eerie’. Many locals are not happy with using the heat from the crematorium to warm up the pool, labelling it ‘sick’ and deeming it insensitive.  Whilst not wanting to further upset those who have lost a loved one, I truly hope that this idea from a forward thinking borough gets granted full approval and congratulated on its green credentials rather than becoming just another hot air plan for carbon-saving that just billows away into nothingness.