Low Impact

Planning on getting away for a long weekend? Maybe a week down by the beach? Doing up a checklist before you head off to make sure you don’t forget anything?

If so, add “turn off hot water heater” to the list.

This tip especially applies to owners of electric hot water heaters, although it may be of use to people with gas hot water heaters of the “storage” variety, rather than the “on-demand” variety.

Your basic storage hot water heater has a thermostat that is always keeping the water at a nice constantly warm temperature - 50 degrees centigrade is common in Australia. The key word here is always - a storage heater has no way of knowing whether you’ll want that toasty warm shower at 7am, 8pm, or 3am!

Now, if you’re going to be sunning yourself on a Gold Coast beach, chances are that you don’t have too much need for a big tank of 250 litres of water being kept simmering away back home. How you turn off your particular water heater will vary, especially with gas systems. But, using my electric hot water system as an example, I simply go to my meter box, and flick off the switch marked “Hot Water”.

(Of course, you’ll want to remember to turn it on again when you get home - arriving home late at night and falling straight into bed will result in a rude shock the next morning when you go to start the day with a nice shower! )

Given that an electric hot water system can be responsible for up to 25% of a house’s power consumption, a simple thing like this can make a real difference both in terms of your power bill, and your greenhouse gas emissions.

Categories: efficiency, environment, environmental, green, reduce

Tags: efficiency, hot water