I was always told that your water heater is one of the biggest consumers of energy in your house.
Of course, everyone knows it’s not as bad as your HVAC system, but still it is a high consumer. I always thought that was true until recently when I discovered that water heaters are becoming more and more energy efficient as time goes on. When I was a kid, my mom thought she was very smart when she latched onto the idea of putting a timer on the hot water heater. We had to take showers at certain times of the day or they would be cold. Of course, I was just a kid, so I pretty much took my shower at normal times. My brothers and sisters, though, we’re much older and we’re coming and going with jobs and college and sports and other things so it was harder for them to take their shower when the water heater was properly heating the water. In any event, my current landlord tells me that it’s not even necessary to worry about the hot water heater at all because it really doesn’t use much energy or cost much money. I decided to go and see if that is really true by looking online. And it turns out that the best idea for your water heater is to get a solar water heater. Turns out there are two basic types of solar hot water heaters. One is passive, and the other is active. In the South where our air conditioner is our best friend, we tend to favor passive solar water heaters. That’s because they collect water and work best where there is a lot of sunshine. We definitely have that here in the hot and humid southeast of the US.