Frugally Green

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.

• 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:

• 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!

Ever since we terrestrials decided long ago to cover our loins with leaves, we’ve been on a mission to set ourselves apart with our clothing.  If you work in a professional environment, dress code or not, you’ve likely found yourself the proud (or frustrated) owner of at least a few “dry clean only” garments.  Myself?  I do everything I can to avoid them for simplicity’s sake, but I do admit to owning a few pairs of pants that must be cleaned by a “professional.”

Once every few months (I don’t wear them often), I begrudgingly gather up these pants and march down the street to the local dry cleaner.  Little did I know, the main ingredient in this process is a chemical called perchloroethylene or, more affectionately abbreviated, “perc.”  Turns out, perc is a nasty toxin, classified as a Group 2A carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.  In other words, it’s likely carcinogenic to humans.  We already know it does nasty things to fish and other wildlife, causes skin irritations for many people, and is heavy enough to seep under the water table, making it a soil contaminant that is very difficult to clean.  Did you know you might live next door to a future Superfund site?

Enter the Eco Cleaner

Given my increased awareness of these sorts of issues and an intense desire to avoid itchy legs, I decided to take my bi-annual load of dry clean only pants to a new eco-friendly shop that just opened up a few more blocks away.  They call themselves ecodrycleaner and shops just like them seem to be popping up all over the country.  They bill themselves as sustainable for these reasons:

• Their cleaning solution is a liquid silicone that breaks down into water, CO2, and sand – no potentially harmful chemicals involved.

• Their newer, efficient equipment allows them to harvest and recycle cleaning solution so that very little is wasted in the process.

• They offset their electricity needs with investment in renewable energy.

• Recycling of metal hangers, cuff clips, collar supports, and poly garment bags is heavily encouraged and promoted through their customer recycling program.

• They reduce auto emissions by offering a free pick-up and delivery service that maximizes the efficiency of car trips to their business.

After chatting with the girl at the counter for a bit, she handed me my receipt and I was impressed to see that the cost was pretty comparable to other dry cleaners I’ve used around town.  I suppose they might be better able to compete by being able to reuse more solution (most traditional dry cleaning shops I’ve frequented have pretty antiquated equipment) and by cutting costs on new expendables by encouraging their patrons to drop off  unneeded hangers, garment bags, and other accessories.

Either way, now that I know that they exist and are competitively priced , I’ll continue to give my business to ecodrycleaner for my bi-annual laundry dump.

Cut down on your trips to the cleaner

At this point, you might be wondering how I manage to make such infrequent trips to the cleaners.  Like I said above, I have very few dry clean only garments and I don’t wear them all that often, but I also wash them myself from time to time.  That’s right, if it isn’t stained and just needs to be “freshened up,” I’ll hand wash an item to prevent a trip to the dry cleaners.

You might be surprised to know that many clothing manufacturers will label a piece as dry clean only when delicate hand washing is more than adequate.  This is a marketing tactic they use because people are more likely to buy something they perceive to be less work to maintain.  Turns out, most people consider going to the dry cleaner less work than hand washing.  Now, you can’t do this with every item and different materials will require different types of care, but for many typical garments, some delicate elbow grease will do the trick.  Check out this article for a more in depth explanation of how you can care for your dry clean only clothes.

All in all, we should act within our means whenever possible to reduce our impact on the environment.  This is especially true when alternatives to what we are used to exist but require just a small investment of time to discover and implement.  By rejecting the status-quo and committing ourselves to life long learning, we will continuously improve ourselves and the world around us.