Upgrade Your Water Heater
High efficiency and on demand hot water heaters can save a lot of money and energy. On demand heaters save energy by only heating water as you need it instead of cycling on and off continuously to maintain a tank at a temperature setpoint. Solar heating of hot water is perhaps the best way to go in the long term, but it represents a significant up front investment.
If you are not yet ready to invest in equipment upgrades, there are a lot of simple things that you can do to improve the efficiency of your existing system. The easiest thing to do is simply turn down the temperature setpoint. You then simply mix in less cold water at the faucet for the same delivered water temperature. Insulating your tank and hot water pipes can also save a lot of energy, especially if they are located outside of your building’s thermal envelope. PNM will usually pay for your water heater blanket if you present them with your receipts. If you have a recirculation pump to save water by keeping hot water circulating to remote fixtures you should know that they can use a lot of energy if they run constantly. We recommend that recirculation pumps be placed on timers or have infrared triggers that turn the pump on when they detect motion near the remote fixtures. Some companies have remote push buttons to activate the pump a few minutes before you use the hot water.
