Energy Saver Guy

Posts Tagged ‘Hot water’

Electric Hot Water Heater. You can keep the circuit breaker “off” on your electric hot water heater for up to 18-20 hrs a day depending on your needs. It’s always a twin pole breaker (See Video). It is harder to adjust the temperature because you have to take off the covers. It is quite simple to find out what breaker runs it and keep it off when not needed. On either hot water heater it’s a great idea to drain a couple gallons out every 6 months (depending on your water quality) By draining out any sediment in the bottom of the tank, it will increase efficiency.

PS. Drain it until the water is clear.

Gas Hot Water Heater Turn down the temperature setting on your gas hot water heater. With a gas heater it is as easy as turning a dial! This is something very easy to experiment with and can save big money. Turn it down to a little bit below warm, try it for a couple days. Too cold? Turn it up a bit. You can also turn it to “vacation” if you go away for more than a day. Recently we went away for a long weekend, I turned the hot water heater to vacation Friday morning, when we returned with relatives Sunday evening one of them took a shower. I apologized when they came downstairs saying I had forgotten to turn the hot water heater back on! They said they didn’t even notice. I took a shower a half hour later and it wasn’t hot, but it was still comfortable. Needless to say, I never turned it back on Sunday night. Monday night (Hot and humid 90 degrees) I took another shower and I must say it was a little brisk, but the whole experience was kind of interesting, not heating any hot water for 4 days, heck thats 12% of my billing period with no usage!

With 125 million households in the US heating 40 gallons of water amounts to 5 billion gallons of water being kept hot! What a waste! Turn your gas hot water heater down today.