Now here’s the best energy efficient tip for my hot water heater. Install a timer on the heater. Set that timer to come on only to heat water when you need it.

Our auditor sets his water heater timer to heat water only four hours each evening. This little trick provides his family of three with plenty of water for evening and morning use. They wash clothes in cold water using Cold Water Tide.

We set our timer to come on two hours each morning and two hours each evening. So far we have not run out of hot water. Although I occasionally wash clothes in warm water, we still have plenty of hot water for dishes and showers.

You can get this nifty little timer for your hot water heater at you local Home Depot.

The temperature setting for your hot water heater affects your utility bill. Manufacture setting may vary but a good temperature setting is around 120 degrees.

What about added insulation to your hot water heater? Home Depot has nifty little insulated wraps to cover your water heater. My auditor said not to get one; there’s plenty of insulation in the walls of the water heater itself.

However, that little copper coil coming from the side of the water heater does need insulation. Just a piece of foam insulation around it would do the trick.

Now, see these wires and pipes coming up from the floor in this picture? Those wires and pipes come up to the water heater via holes in the floor. These holes mean air leaks. To remedy this situation, we simply need to fill the holes with insulation. That’s an easy fix!

After checking our air conditioning and heating system, our energy auditor checked out the hot water heater.

The serial number told him the water heater is 12 years old. Not bad for our area. Hard water deposits can reduce the life-span of a typical hot water heater to 10 years.

Next, the auditor checked the heating element with a gadget from his tool bag. I don’t know what the numbers measure, but the verdict is our element indeed heats the water. If hard water deposits—calcium in our case—builds up on the element, the calcium build-up insulates the heating element and the water will not get hot.

Hot water heater tip: To protect the heating element from calcium build-up, drain about a quart of water out of it every month. My husband, being the handyman he is, drains our water heater periodically. Not monthly, just when he thinks about it. But even his sporadic diligence has protected our water heater.

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.