Four Ways to Save on Your Hot Water Bill

Have you ever stopped to think how much hot water you use in a week? It has been said that a family of four who each shower 5 minutes every day will use 700 gallons a week. Now add in all the hot water you use for washing dishes or even the wash and you'll add good bit more.

Lets assume this number comes out to 750 gals in a week. Can you visualize 750 gallons? Probably not. So, think of your hot water heater. It usually holds anywhere between 30 and 70 gallons. This means, for a 30 gallon water heater, it would have to be filled, heated and used 25 times every week. As you can see, heating your hot water can be a significant expenditure every month. But what can you do, we need it for showering, the dishes and washing!!

Well there are some things you can do with your hot water heater to help cut expenses, such as:

• If it is old, get rid of it and replace it with a high efficiency heater. Many people wait until their's break and then rush out and get one without shopping around for the best one. This could be costly because if you don't buy a highly efficient one, you'll be paying for this (in more ways than one) for many years.
• You can wrap your water tank in an insulating blanket. These blankets are relatively cheap and do a good job of keeping the heat in the water rather than letting it escape.
• You can turn the thermostat down a little. This saves quite a bit of money, but you can only turn it down so far without it being too cool for when you really need hot water.
• Now after doing these few things there aren't many more things that you can do, unless you want to step it up a little., and by that I mean add a solar hot water heater. Now this sounds complicated, but it is not as bad as you might think.

You can build your own solar water heater relatively inexpensively and you don't have to get rid of your hot water heater. When you add a solar water heater, most times you add an extra tank outside your house. This tank is connected to your existing hot water tank and feeds it with hot water, thus cutting down on the amount of electric (or gas) you need to heat your water.

Enjoying hot water everyday is a quite a pleasure, but as with most things, pleasures cost money. Luckily there are things you can do to save money on your hot water. Most people think of the first three points listed above, but few people ever would consider adding a solar water heater. Maybe you should. To see how easy it is, read on....

A DIY solar water heater is certainly doable by most people. For more information and details on how to build one that is just right for you (with materials costing less than a $100) please read DIY Solar Water Heater.

Autor: Bruce Dinger
Added: June 12, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/