Quote:
Originally Posted by cmittle
Speaking of wrapping the water heater itself I've got a question. I went down (it's in our soon to be finished basement) and touched the outside of my water heater the other day and as best I can tell it is room temperature on the outside. This indicates to me that I shouldn't worry about wrapping it as I am not losing much heat (via conduction) to the room.
Am I thinking correctly on this, or are there significant radiant effects that I should be trying to overcome as well?
Maybe I'll have to get my laser temp gun and do some measurements of the tank, the wall and floor near the tank and the wall and floor ~6 feet from the tank (and maybe the rest of the basement walls/floors for comparison).
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As a test, just put a small blanket on your water heater and see how much heat you feel underneath it after about an hour. That should give you a bit of an indicator of how quickly your water heater is losing heat. The fact that the outside of your water heater feels like it is at room temperature only tells that the outside of your water heater is in fact at about room temperature. It doesn't tell you how fast your water heater is losing heat.