Episode 3 :: Hot water wastage
But with a few simple actions you can get the hot water you need using less energy - and by doing your bit, you'll also be helping to make sure that more of our country's resources are left over for generations to come.
Take action
- Check your hot water temperature. It should be around 55° Celsius at the tap so it is low enough not to burn, and it must be 60° Celsius at the cylinder to prevent the growth of Legionella bacteria. Don't set it higher than you need to - an extra 10° Celsius could cost you $20 to $30 a year and there's a risk of scalding.
- Fix any dripping hot taps by replacing the washer or fitting. Dripping hot taps can waste 4 to 200 litres of water every day, potentially costing you hundreds of dollars a year in wasted energy use. A new washer, which can fix the drips, only costs a few dollars.
- Wrap your hot water cylinder and pipes to keep the heat in. For around $60, you can wrap your electric hot water cylinder (you can't put a cylinder wrap on a gas hot water system), and for about $5 per metre, you can insulate the hot water pipes so they hold the heat better. You can buy these from hardware stores. If you're wrapping an older (pre-1987) cylinder and the pipes you could save up to $150 a year.
- How you use hot water also helps - find out more simple ways to save on hot water.
Did you know?
- Hot water heating is something we don't really see in our homes, but it accounts for around 30% of our energy bills and costs the average household around $650 a year.
- Across the 1.62 million households in New Zealand, if we all saved just 10% of energy used to heat our water we could save the country over $100 million every year.
- About 80% of all hot water used in a typical New Zealand household is for showering and/or bathing.
