One of the joys and wonders of being Infrastructure Man is getting new insights into how we use energy. I wasn’t at all surprised that Joulee the Free Salvage Tesla is our biggest energy user. The margin was a bit surprising, though I hadn’t anticipated us going into town very often. HA found some great classes and there are live musical and theatric performances in town, so we end up making the hour-long round trip about three times a week. These last two weeks, which have featured a lot of badly-needed rain but not much sunshine, haven’t generated enough electricity to keep Joulee on the road so we have been having to use Timmy the Titan.
The big surprise to me was the kitchen sink. I bought the electric water heater half a year ago, but it didn’t seem too important so I procrastinated installing it until a month ago. Now I’m noticing two things: our propane use has dwindled to near zero, in spite of it still being the source of hot water for the shower. The last time I switched tanks (and they’re the little 20 pound tanks that hold 4-5 gallons of propane) was over two months ago, and that included using it to preheat the water when I refilled the hot tub. Previously, they were lasting about six weeks, and I figured the tank was pretty much ready to be changed around the time I switched to electric hot water for the kitchen sink. Instead, it’s still going a month later, though I fully expect I’ll have to switch it in the middle of my next shower. So our propane use is now minimal, but our electricity use went way up (coinciding, also, with shorter days of fall and a change to the rainiest/cloudiest weather we’ve had in the year since we installed the solar plant).
The water heater is only a 1,200 watt appliance, but we use the kitchen sink almost constantly during the day. It’s averaging 3.5 kWh daily. Its electricity use is up there with the clothes dryer (5,000 watts, but used intermittently) and the hot tub (about 1,200 watts for about 3-5 hours a day). So even though we’ve always been very careful with our hot water use at the kitchen sink, it’s still a major player in our energy budget.
If you’re trying to reduce your energy bills, looking at how you use hot water at your kitchen sink is important.
—2p