Hamwells x The Urban Woods

Blue at The Urban Woods Delft

The Urban Woods was completed in Delft in June 2026. The residential building consists of 102 apartments across ten floors and is largely constructed from timber, with a strong focus on circularity, energy efficiency and the reuse of materials.

In 15 of the 102 apartments, the Hamwells Blue has been installed: an active shower heat recovery system. The remaining apartments are equipped with a conventional shower heat recovery system.

Having both systems installed within the same building creates an interesting opportunity to gain real-world experience with different approaches to recovering heat from shower water. The Blue is particularly suitable for apartments where a traditional vertical shower heat recovery system is difficult to integrate.

Potential energy savings

The amount of energy saved through shower heat recovery depends on several factors, including the number of residents, shower duration, water consumption and shower temperature.

With an average use of around 40 litres of hot shower water per person per day, the recovered energy can amount to several hundred kWh per person per year. In households with multiple residents, the potential savings increase accordingly.

Across the 15 apartments equipped with Blue, this could result in several thousand kWh of recovered energy per year, depending on actual usage. Ultimately, measuring performance under real-life conditions will provide the most valuable insight.

This is what makes The Urban Woods particularly interesting: some apartments use the active Blue system, while the majority use conventional shower heat recovery. This provides an opportunity to monitor and compare the energy use and performance of both solutions under similar living conditions.

For Hamwells, the project also demonstrates how active shower heat recovery can be integrated into a modern multi-storey residential building. Not as a standalone demonstration, but as part of 102 homes designed for everyday living.