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How to Have Hot Water and a Lower Energy Bill

By Solar energy | September 11, 2008

Time to Get Your Energy Bill Out of Hot Water!

Heating water for your home accounts for roughly 25 percent of your home energy consumption. Since we are trying to reduce our home energy usage by 25 percent, we clearly need to do something about our hot water.

I will make a small confession here. I want a solar hot water heater. Here in South Texas solar thermal energy abounds even in winter! The Maker sends this lovely thermal energy to us on a regular basis and this mere mortal feels ungrateful not using it wisely!

OK. Tirade over.

My husband agrees using solar energy to heat our water makes sense. But he also wants to know that a solar water heater makes sense to our bank account. I do appreciate his frugality.

How much electric energy does our hot water heater use anyway? According to the energy guide on the side of the water heater, our tank uses 4992 kilowatt-hours per year. If this estimate is correct, we pay about $600 a year or $50 a month to heat our water.

Since we use our hot water only in the early morning and evening, my handy husband installed an Intermatic Mechanical Time Switch (T104R) on our water heater. First he tried The Little Gray Box but couldn’t get it to work. So he traded it for an Intermatic Mechanical Time Switch (T104R) , which he found easier to install.

The timer is set to turn the water heater on for three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We will see if this makes a noticeable difference in our energy consumption.

Three hours of heating water to 120 degrees may be more than we need. If we don’t run out of hot water, we will adjust the timer to heat the water only two hours each morning and evening.

More later.

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Topics: Home Energy Use, Reducing energy use, Solar Thermal | No Comments »

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