Pretty much every time I ride my scooter, someone makes a comment about how much I must be saving on gas. True. We've figured out that it gets between 75-80 mpg. Pretty awesome. Today I had to fill up the tank (around 4 dollars) and it was very fun to be right next to a Suburban at the pump. :)
But this post is about natural gas. In our new place, the water heater runs on natural gas. We also have gas cooking. At our old place, we had on-site maintenance (yeah!) but no access to the water heater. Here, any maintenance requires a written request, which for some reason has been very difficult to turn in.... I just can't seem to make myself get three kids into the car to bring a piece of paper over to the management company. I could fax it, but I don't want to unpack the fax. I could probably e-mail it.... anyway. I haven't done it.
What does this have to do with saving gas? Our water heater is broken, and we can't have hot water until it's fixed. Thus, we're saving a bunch of money :)
It's actually not too bad. We only really use hot water in the shower (and then, it's only 3 out of the 5 of us), but it's so stinking hot that it's not a TOTAL necessity.
I looked at the water heater, and it's rated very low on efficiency. It's exciting to see that I can turn the temperature down (I wasn't allowed to in the old place). According to the Department of Energy, each 10 degree temperature reduction saves 3-5% in energy. When we do get it fixed, I plan to buy it an insulating blanket. (This should save another 5-9%, although installation is apparently more complicated on gas water heaters.) We are also considering turning off the water heater for most of the day, but I would like to do calculations to see how much gas this really saves. Does anybody know if turning off the water heater for 20 hours or so saves gas? Or does all the difference get used up in heating the tank of cold water? How long does it take to warm up?
This site says that it's worthwhile to turn the water heater off when leaving town. It also says you can use a timer for an electric water heater. How about gas? If you go out to the garage and manually turn it on and off, will that work?
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I think that the most efficient use of your gas hot water heater is simply to keep the setting as low as you can for your needs (no sense in overheating water only to mix it with lots of cold water for your bath), turn it to "vacation" or "pilot" setting when you're gone for a couple days or more at a time, and insulate the tank. Other than that, watch to use less hot water. They say that most hot water used for washing clothes is unnecessary. Cold water does the trick most of the time.
We recently replaced our gas tank with a gas tankless hot water heater. While it's true that we use less gas, because of our conservation habits we weren't using much to begin with and it will take a long time to recuperate our investment (though I'm always pleased to us less gas).
We've always been concerned about water usage, but now I wonder if that isn't more important an issue than gas (see www.waterfootprint.org). Oh, so much to worry about! I think that we all just have to do the best that we can individually, remember that every little step counts, and not get discouraged.
Thanks for your blog and your efforts. When my kids were little, I don't know that I did as much as you do (in the alternative transportation area).
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