Unfortunately, depending on your point of view (!), our hot water heater at home is fueled by natural gas. I think that if you are comparing 40 gallon natural gas to 40 gallon electric then the gas costs less to operate, but this is not about heating 40 gallons of water! It's about being smarter than that! We don't actually ever use that much hot water at any given time. We use a little hot water at fairly predictable times, morning bathing, evening dinner dishes, etc. It is just so hard to get people to think outside of the norm.
I have not been able to find any diy friendly timers for natural gas fired appliances, but having said that, I wonder if I could use a timer to disable the direct vent blower on the water heater, thus preventing ignition. I don't know enough about gas to be comfortable with something like that, and still wonder about the logic of heating 40 gallons of water to temp just to do the dishes.
|