About us

In this case, the problem lies in a simple act that most people do almost every day, but comes at a high economic, environmental and climate cost: taking a shower. Every time we shower, staggering amounts of energy and money literally go down the drain.

We who founded Enduce are two old people engineering friends with a shared passion – to solve problems and create change. Henrik is a technical doctor in energy technology, a technical specialist in the process industry, and the person who came up with the idea of transferring and adapting technologies used in the power and process industries to households. Gustav is cowengineer and product developer, whose know-how could help move the innovation from sketches and calculations to refined solutions and reality.

We thought, there must be an existing product that efficiently recovers energy from used tap water. So we started looking. And look. But we did not find any solutions, either existing on the market or in patent databases, that were based on basic knowledge of heat transfer in challenging environments; the solutions that existed were either energy inefficient, cumbersome in design (large, sophisticated and expensive), or did not sufficiently take into account the fouling that occurs on heat transfer surfaces when recycling gray water energy. 

So we decided to take matters into our own hands. We would develop the world's most energy-efficient floor drain solution that would be so smart in its design that there would be no need for electronics or moving parts, and would be affordable to enable scalability and environmental benefits on a significant scale.

We started from the knowledge that the plate heat exchanger - a type of high-efficiency heat exchanger that has been used successfully in industry for over 100 years - is the most efficient solution for transferring energy from one water flow to another. But the experts agreed that the plate heat exchanger was too sensitive to grease, fibers and dirt, and had too high a pressure drop, to be used in a shower floor drain. It was impossible, they said.

So we decided to make it possible.

This journey began in 2008 with a problem and an idea. Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge - not to mention through the shower cubicle in the small room at Umeå University where we spent many a spare moment testing the best solution. Drawing inspiration from the industry, and using an evidence-based approach, we systematically addressed the weaknesses of the plate heat exchanger one by one, and came up with the unique and patented system that made it possible to put a durable and highly efficient heat recovery system into the shower room floor, fully in line with the stringent building and industry regulations in Sweden and the Nordics. A system that preheats incoming cold water on its way to the shower mixer, using the hot outgoing shower water, so that as much as 75 % of the shower energy can be reused.

So here we are, many years, thousands of showers, and dozens of prototype generations later, with five patents and patent applications, and a breakthrough product. A highly efficient and profitable energy recovery floor drain that contributes more to a sustainable future for every traditional energy-guzzling floor drain it replaces.