Aside from the heating and cooling of your home, your hot water heater likely uses the most energy in your home. Knowing this, it’s wise to try to make this energy usage as efficient as possible so that you’re saving both energy and money. And luckily, there are all kinds of ways that you can do this.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for saving energy with your water heater.
Keep The Temperature Lower
One of the first and best things that you can do to help use less energy with your water heater is to turn down the temperature on it.
In many cases, like when you have young children in the house or in assisted living communities, it makes sense to have the water temperature set lower so that there’s less of a chance of someone accidentally getting scalded. But in addition to this, having a lower temperature will also require that your hot water heater turns on less often and will have to keep the water at a lower temperature so that you’re not using quite as much energy.
As a good rule of thumb, you should try to set your water heater at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit to use less energy and to keep the water at a safe temperature.
Use Cold Water Where You Can
Another way that you can save energy with your water heater is to only use it when necessary. There are likely a lot of things in your home that could use hot water but that don’t really need to. So if you can eliminate the times where you waste hot water when you don’t actually need it, you can use less of your hot water.
To put this into practice, think about all of the things that you’re currently using hot water for. If you’re using hot water to wash your clothes, consider turning the settings to cold and seeing if you can even notice a difference in the cleanliness of your clothing. You could also be sure that your faucets are always set to cold water for things like washing your hands or rinsing out dishes in the sink.
Add More Insulation
To help your hot water heater have to use less energy to keep the water warm, you can consider adding more insulation to both the water heater itself and the pipes where the hot water will travel.
If there’s more insulation around the hot water heater, the water can stay warmer without the heater having to turn on again. And if you are able to insulate the pipes where the heated water is moving, there won’t be as much heat loss in the transfer process.
If you want to save energy with your hot water heater, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you in doing this.