Comments: Money Saving Tips: Save Up to 30% on Your Heating Bills

Here are some comments I received to my post titled Money Saving Tips: Save Up to 30% on Your Heating Bills where I asked whether or not I needed a wrap around my new-ish water heater (to help save money). The first offered this piece of advice:

You probably do not need to worry about the insulation on the water heater. You can do a touch test... if it feels warms, you are losing heat. If it feels about room temperature, you are probably fine. Warning: do not touch the pipes, unless you want to get burned. Also, be cautious when touching the water heater. If you can feel the heat radiating from it without making contact, it may be hot enough to burn you.

Newer water heaters are pretty good about heat loss. I am considering switching to a tankless, on demand, water heater. The sooner you switch, the quicker you get a return on your investment. I think that is a good way to cut your energy costs year-round.

I'll try that. Thanks for the suggestion. Here's a similar comment:

We bought a new water heater last year (also without a blanket). I am not convinced that it needs one as it is not even warm to the touch. I would think wrapping your hot water pipes where they are exposed would provide greater savings in your situation.

Finally, someone else commented about tankless water heaters and their value (or lack thereof):

I did a fair amount of research on the tankless heaters. The added cost over a newer, more efficient tank-based heater is significant. For us, who spend about $15 a month on hot water it just didn't make sense to pay double the cost. With the number of bathrooms we have we would have needed a couple of units too in order to meet potential demand.

I haven't gotten this far into the water heater cost savings equation, but obviously anyone will need to justify the added expense with greater savings over the lifetime of the product.

Comments

[Barry]

I think gas-powered tankless water heaters have to vent to the outside, which is not a requirement for normal gas-powered heaters. This means extra effort/expense if you are retrofitting.

[FRED MIRKO]

I don't know where you get you numbers for the cost of a tankless water heater and numbers of savings.

The way we figure things out from our own experience is that in a 10 year period we save $5040.00 ($40 a month) on the energy portion of our electric bill. Now let me say that we paid $295 for our unit(11.4 KW ) and $110 to install it.That is a total of $405 and subtract that from the $5040 savings and that gives us a savings of $4635.00. And that is not the best part of this picture. We have a LIFETIME WARRANTY on the unit and if it were to malfunction we have a distributor here in town with a 2 hour turn around of getting a new or repaired one for replacement. What a deal.

Something else to consider is that the USA is the only country that throws away 7.5 million TANK heaters away in the land fill each year.

I know of one family in a foreign country that had a free replacement of a tankless heater after 31 years. Try that at your company that made your TANK heater.

That is my opinion and I am sticking to it because it is true.

I just read recently that blankets on gas powered water heaters can be a fire hazard. Best to only use it with electric powered units.