Waterheater,can it be turned on and off

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I was reading that water heaters use alot of electricity and someone said they turned theirs off and on each day. I wonder if this would hurt the heater? Would turn it off when were on vacation to save money and energy. Thanks for your help. Joanne

-- Joanne (ronandjo@sisna.com), May 24, 2001

Answers

Yes, you can safely turn it off and on. Means no hot shower when you return from vacation though. There was an earlier thread about people using timers on their hot water systems, to turn them on and off at certain times of day.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), May 24, 2001.

I turn mine off whenever I leave overnight or more,, been doing it for years,, its hooked up to its own breaker,, so I just flip the switch,, I also turn off the water pump,, in case a line breaks while Im gone

-- stan (sopal@net-port.com), May 24, 2001.

We keep ours turned off except when taking showers and washing dishes. We just flip off the breaker in the breaker panel that supplies power to the water heater. May be overkill but we don't even have air conditioning here in the deep south. I'll feel sorry for people in California after they turn off their hot tubs and air conditioning and then still have brown outs but not before.

-- David (bluewaterfarm@mindspring.com), May 24, 2001.

We use an AMF Paragon electric hot water timer. We put it in about 18 years ago so I don't know if the brand is still available. (We also used a heater blanket on our old hot water heater, the new ones have extra insulation already.)It is installed on the line to the heater so it does involve electrical work; get an electrician if you are not comfortable doing it yourself. We have it set to turn on 30 min before we get up at 5am, off about noon, on again at 4pm and off at 6pm. We can turn it on or off any time with a switch. The timer has saved us a lot of money on our electrical bill besides conserving energy.

-- Nancy Bakke-McGonigle Mn. Sunset (dmcgonig@smig.net), May 25, 2001.

Lowe's has the hot water electric timers for $20

-- Mike (alabamaman1@usa.net), May 25, 2001.

Thank you for writing. I had called some of my local stores and no one had them. We do have a Lowe's store about 45 miles from us and we go there for shopping,we have to go get some wood to finish off the new window my husband put in the living room. This sounds like a good way to save energy. In our area our power company is going to offer some people lower rates if they use there most power on off hours. One of the stores said this would not be good for the heater,so gald I could tell him that one person had been doing for 18 years.

-- Joanne (ronandjo@sisna.com), May 26, 2001.

Here in Australia there is a special off-peak rate for electric hot- water heaters. Heats during the very early hours of the morning. Stores it all day. Some of them have a different circuit (normal price - not discounted) for extra heating if you run through the stored hot water during the day. This has been going for many decades, so these heaters have been powered-on and powered-off (automatically) every day for decades. Actually works by transmitting signals along the electric mains to power these off-peak heaters on and off.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), May 26, 2001.

Bear in mind hot water heaters work off of U.S. 220 volt. This requires a heavier wire than 110 volt. Probably will have to be run in metal shielded, flexible tubing. Really not difficult. Just follow instuctions which come with the timer.

My heater is only only about 4-5 hours a day. I also turn it completely off when leaving for more than a day or so. Just have to remember to turn it back on when I return.

In my opinion, an electric hot water heater timer probably has one of the fastest payback period of any energy saving device.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), May 27, 2001.

-- (noneofyour@biz.com), July 13, 2001