Water Heater On All The Time or Not?

[edatlanta]

I full time and usually leave my water heater on all the time. If at a park with paid electricity I use the electric setting, if on my winter site where I am now I use the propane setting. I have an external 150 gallon propane tank on my site and propane for me is cheaper than electricity. Not a lot cheaper, but cheaper still.

Even though I just leave the heater on, I can't help but wonder if I would see enough savings to make it worth the hassle if I only turned it on when needed. I know there will be times I want hot water right now and would have to wait.

Any thoughts out there?

[DieselX]

We are full timing as well and I always turn off the hot water at night and turn it back on the next day. It only takes a few minutes to warm back up completely. I don't know if i'm saving money or not, it's just been a habit of mine.

[norty1]

We leave ours on electric all the time. If I was somewhere that needed gas to heat water, I would turn it on for bath time and leave it off most of the time. I find that it will hold water for 6-8 hours and that is adequate to wash dishes and hands.

May be worth a try to see if your propane use goes down enough for the trouble. On your and my rig, it is just throwing a switch.

[Rob_Fla]

We leave ours on electric all the time, we are not at a seasonal site and do not have metered electric.

We have used the propane and electric together a couple of times for quicker recovery when taking baths back to back.

[RoyBraddy]

Been watching a few threads on the RV NET FORUM about using RV water heaters for heating the trailer instead of using the gas heaters.

One post came up with one of the pre-heaters that looks interesting. This might be a power saver you could use on your setup. Of course it runs on 120VAC but if you can get the required watts down enough to run from an INVERTER might be worth looking into. Be sure to read the reviews on how other folks are using it.
http://www.amazon.com/Kats-13100-Alu...=pd_sim_auto_1


I too leave my hot water OFF until I need to use it. On my OFF-ROAD POPUP I leave it off all the time. Its just as easy to heat up water on the gas stove to wash dishes with.

Roy Ken

[edatlanta]

I was just thinking about this when I got up this morning. As I said in my original post, propane per btu is cheaper for me than electricity so I don't use electricity on my home base site for hot water or refrigerator. I run both on propane. And since my external propane tank is large I doubt I could ever see any difference. I know it doesn't take it long to heat up, but I was "just thinkin". I know that is a dangerous thing to do.

[norty1]

I have gotten into some trouble for "not thinking" too, so we are live dangerously no matter what we do. Ha

[Seann45]

I turn the water heater on first thing in the morning and once dishes and bathing are done and it has recovered I turn it off for the rest of the day.. the tank holds the heat well enough for washing hands and if I need HOT water again later it only takes a few min to heat that small a tank.

[iowahank]

Everything I read on heating/cooling says it is more efficient to let a room cool and then
re-heat to your temp than to maintain a temperature. But I gotta say, I would think the savings
for the water heater would be negligible at best. But I do have a friend that does this when he has
to pay for the electricity. And he's got a lot more $$$ than I do and I just leave mine on.

[Zinkow]

I leave the HWH's electric and propane switches on all the time. The only time I turn off the propane (to the HWH & refrig) is when I get my LPG tank filled, in the summer about once every other month or so, in the winter once a month. In the summer the only time I hear the HWH gas turn on is if someone is showering or doing a lot of dishes, otherwise, it's running on electric.