During the winter months, your hot water heater is going to be working much harder than in other seasons of the year. So if you’re seeing a big increase in your heating bill because of your hot water heater, finding ways to use your hot water more efficiently can have a big impact on your budget.
To help you see how you can save money and energy in this way, here are three tips for using your hot water heater more efficiently.
Bring In More Insulation
The reason why your hot water heater has to work harder in cold weather is because the temperature outside makes it take longer for the water in your home to get hot and make it easier for the heat to be lost when heating isn’t actively taking place.
One thing you can do to address this issue is to add more insulation to the water heating system in your home. If your hot water tank doesn’t have any insulation around it, you might want to find a way to add insulation here. This can easily be done by wrapping your hot water tank in an insulating blanket. Another option is to insulate any hot water pipes that aren’t already insulated. As long as you can see these pipes, it should be easy to wrap an insulating sleeve around them and keep your water warmer for longer.
Change Your Hot Water Habits
By not needing to use as much hot water, you can run your hot water heater more efficiently. To do this, you’ll likely need to change some of your habits around how you use hot water in your home.
If you tend to take a lot of baths at home, consider switching to showers a few times a week to use less hot water. You can also change the setting on your washer so that you’re washing your clothes using cold water, which can be just as effective at cleaning your clothes. Additionally, try not to pre-rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, as this has you using twice the amount of hot water since you’ll also be using hot water in the dishwasher. If you can change some of these habits, you should be using your hot water heater much more efficiently.
Turn Your Thermostat Down
The temperature that you have your hot water heater set at can also help it to run more efficiently.
For health and safety reasons, you really don’t need your hot water heater set at higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you check the thermostat on your hot water heater and it’s set higher than this, you could be wasting a lot of energy heating water to a temperature that you don’t even want. By turning the temperature down, you’ll be running a much more efficient hot water heater.
If you’re wanting to be more efficient with how you use hot water in your home, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you see how this can be done.
