Anyone ever heard of using a timer on a water heater to cut standby loss?
Seems like a wasted effort with a modern, well insulated water heater but a woman I know swears that her elec bill dropped when she flipped the breaker off most nights for a month.
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Replies
The standby loss on a modern water heater is about the same as a 100 watt light bulb. Yes, you could save something by turning it off at night but I doubt that you could notice the difference. The average home owner spends about $60 to $70 per month to heat their water if they have an electric water heater. The standby costs are a very small fraction of that amount. At 100 watts, the daily savings is 2.4 KWhr. or about $.24/day.
Bill
At the end of a year I could buy a weeks worth of groceries for DW and I.
Notthing to snivvle at in my book.[email protected]
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Do not misunderstand what I said, I said $0.24/day is the standby loss. If you turn it off over night for just 8 hours, it would be on $0.08 per day. Granted, that amounts to a few dollars over the year but, you can save a lot more money by using less hot water and avoiding all hot water waste.
I have always understood that you let the water cool by shutting it off thereby making it work hard again to warm up the water thus negating any savingd.[email protected]
WHICH content will be free, of course; WHICH content will require registration; but WHICH content will be available only to members of FineHomebuilding.com.???
Of course, the water heater works to heat the water up again. But in principle, the standby loss at the lower temperature is less than the loss if the water was kept hot. Hence there is some energy savings. In reality, if you turn a modern heater off over night, the water probably does not drop more than 5 or 10 degrees.
In any case, a timer that turns the water heaer off at night is not a great investment. I would not bother. I would pay much more attention to using less hot water...washing clothes with cold water, not taking long showers, etc.
Bill
Thanks for the input everybody...you confirmed most of what I was thinking though the kW/hour formula will really put the savings in perspective for her.Cheers!
I would like to utilize a timer to turn the water heater on in the mornings or before bathtime at night, to kind of "super heat" the water in the tank, kind of give it a head start. I like really hot, long showers, so what I do now is get up, run hot water until I think the water heater has kicked on, then wait 15-20 minutes and take my shower at that time. If I could eliminate my 15-20 minute wait, my quality of life would improve dramatically. (not really, but just wanted to kid myself) So has anyone ever seen or heard of a timer being used for this purpose?
And, if you are in a heating climate, any heat "lost" by the HW heater goes into the space you're heating anyway, so it's not lost.
Some electric utilities have a service where the customer will pay a reduced rate if the water heater is only powered during off-peak periods. They'll do it with a timer, or in some cases a separate meter, and it can save quite a bit of money.