Frugally Green » efficient appliances

Improve Your Water Heater Efficiency And Save $125 A Year

Tyler — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:00:03 +0000

Your water heater is one of the most important appliances in your home. Without it, you’d be taking cold showers, washing your hands with cold water, and your dishwasher would have a rather hard time cleaning all those soiled dinner plates. To keep your life as convenient as possible, your water heater is working really hard to make sure you have all the hot water you need on a daily basis. However, in doing so, it’s also using up quite a lot of electricity. In fact, the only thing in your house using more is likely your refrigerator.

At an average $0.11 per kWh for electricity, the average American family spends around $1.30 per day for their hot water needs. This equates to $475 every year. If you could improve the efficiency of your water heater by just 25% (a very attainable goal), you could save $125 every year. Below are 5 simple things that you can do to reduce your water heater’s electricity usage. Just be sure to check with your home insurance provider before making any radical changes to your home.

Turn down the thermostat - Your water heater’s thermostat will probably allow you to turn the temperature up to around 160°, but you shouldn’t if you want to save energy. Most people find that they can get by just fine with their thermostat set to 120° -- above that and you’re just paying for water that will serve little purpose but to scald you when you turn a faucet on too hot.

Insulate the hot water pipe - No, you don’t need to undergo any renovation to do this. Most of the heat that is lost in transmission from the tank to your faucet occurs in the first 6 feet of pipe leaving the water heater. If you look at yours, you’ll probably find that there is at least 3 feet of exposed pipe that you can insulate. This can make a big difference. Any hardware store will carry the insulation you need. Just be sure to measure the diameter of the pipe before you buy to ensure a snug fit. Identifying the hot water pipe is really easy, too. Just feel all of them. Only one will be hot to the touch.

Put a jacket on it - Do you get cold in the winter? Well, so does your water heater! By insulating the whole unit with a water heater jacket, you will improve your water heater’s efficiency by keeping the water it has already heated hot. When exposed to prolonged cold conditions, the heating element in your unit will have to stay on much more often in order to keep your water hot. Your local hardware store probably carries one or two that you can choose from. Here’s one available from Amazon.

Clean it out - Over time, sediment and deposits build up in the tank of your water heater, forcing it to work harder and harder to deliver the same performance. You can eliminate this problem by occasionally cleaning your tank out. It’s not that difficult and you only need to do it about once a year to really benefit. Just shut down all power to the unit, connect a garden hose to the emptying spigot and find a safe place to dump the water out. That’s really all there is to it. The video below gives an in depth explanation of how to do this safely and effectively for a gas water heater. For an electric one, just make sure you trip the breaker for it at the electrical panel. Check it out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmlLxEuhnGc

Reduce hot water consumption -- The best way to reduce your water heating bill is to simply use less hot water. Take shorter showers. Use an efficient dishwasher -- some newer models have a heater built in for on-demand use. Wash your clothes in cold water -- hot water is rarely needed to clean clothes these days with advanced detergents we have access to. Use less, spend less. It’s not the easiest concept to master, but it’s still the best.

If you’re extra ambitious:

Install a solar water heater -- This tip will cost the most to implement ($1000-$3500), but is a fantastic way to substantially reduce your electric water heating needs (well beyond the 25% we were aiming for). Don’t be put off by the price. You may be eligible for a number tax credits and rebates for installing a system like this.

There, you now have, on average, $125 a year to do something constructive with: put it in your emergency fund, use it to save towards another goal, or donate it to a worthy cause. The best part about these tips are that they all cost nothing or very little to implement. With the exception of the solar water heater, the materials you buy to implement the other 5 tips will pay for themselves within about 4 months.

Be sure to share any other hot water saving tips you might have up your sleeve!

Can You Benefit From Energy Efficiency Rebates?

Tyler — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:00:53 +0000

Once again, I’ve found myself fantasizing about my dream home. It would be smallish, just outside of the city and filled with super efficient appliances powered by renewable energy sourced from my own property. Maybe even a wind turbine or two (I just read a book about building your own wind turbine). Right at the peak of this fantasy, I was jolted back to reality as I began to think about how tremendous the up-front costs of putting together a system like this could be. Before I became entirely discouraged, I remembered a commercial I’d seen earlier about incentives available to consumers looking to improve the efficiency of their homes, buy efficient appliances, or install renewable energy systems.

Your tax dollars at work

As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one concerned about the up-front costs of the most efficient technologies for our homes. The current administration has made environmental sustainability a high priority for our nation and, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, earmarked a significant chunk of money for energy efficiency. Part of this money will go toward helping you make your own home more efficient by purchasing new appliances and installing renewable energy systems.

Energy efficiency

It is now possible to receive a tax credit worth 30% of the energy efficient upgrades you make to your home (up to $1,500). This is an improvement over the existing credit of only 10%. This credit would apply to the following types of energy saving improvements:

Adding insulation to your home to help keep the heat inside during the winter and outside during the summer
Installing a reflective roof in order to minimize the amount of heat that is absorbed into your home during hot weather
Replacing existing doors and/or windows with better insulated ones to, again, keep that heat where it’s supposed to be
Upgrading your HVAC system or water heater to a more efficient model
Installing a biomass stove that burns a plant derived substance for heating purposes (like wood or pellets). This option surprises me as the EPA says that pollution from wood burning is the #1 cancer risk here in Oregon.

There is a small catch to all of this, however. If you want to cash in on these credits, they have to be installed and operational by the end of 2010. Luckily, Frugally Green readers are very money savvy, so they shouldn’t have any problem saving up for some of these things by the end of next year.

Since adding insulation is the most cost effective improvement for most people, here’s a pretty good FAQ targeting that audience as well as a “heat map” showing the US Department of Energy’s recommendations for insulation levels for different regions of the country. These resources are provided by an insulation company, but I found them to be fairly useful for my research.

Renewable energy

The government has also decided that getting homeowners to install their own renewable energy systems is a top priority. This is why they have made the terms even more favorable for those of you that really want to go the extra mile. If you install a RE system at your primary residence, you are eligible for a tax credit worth 30% of the cost with no dollar limit. This credit would apply to:

Geo-thermal heat pumps that derive their energy from the mass of the earth
Solar water heaters that trap heat from the sun to warm your water
Photovoltaic systems which absorb the sun’s rays and convert them to usable electricity
Small wind turbines that convert the power of the wind to electricity through an alternator
Fuel cell systems which can take nearly any liquid or gaseous fuel and cleanly convert them to electrical energy

The time frame for implementing these RE systems is also much more generous. You are eligible for the credit until the end of 2016. If you’ve had an inclination already to implement some type of renewable energy on your property, you now have, at the time of this post, 7 1/2 years to get your funds together to save 30% on the cost of the system. I should also note that if you’re cursing the daylight right now because you’ve already done something like this, you can still take advantage of a, admittedly much less robust, credit for systems that have already been installed.

Also, this chart published by Energy Star is a good place to see all the federal tax credits available to you for the various items that qualify.

State and local incentives

You might be interested to know that the federal government isn’t the only one offering some help to get us on a more sustainable path. Many states and even local governments offer incentives to make your home more efficient or install renewable energy. DSIRE is the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency. Their website provides a map that you can click through in order find all the applicable rebates and tax incentives available to you for the state that you live in.

For instance, here in Oregon, residents are eligible for personal tax credits, property tax exemptions, and even direct rebates for the purchase of super-efficient appliances or the installation of renewable energy systems. These incentives can really add up and help to make the purchase of a highly efficient appliance or RE system very competitive with their industry standard competitors.

Even without the incentives being offered to us, we should carefully consider the cost savings and benefits that we can realize by purchasing more efficient products. It’s important to remember that becoming frugally green is a long-term commitment and, as such, requires us to occasionally look past the initial cost of an item in order to see the long-term savings that it will provide not only us, but society as well.