On Aug 9, 11:52*am, " wrote:
On Aug 9, 11:10 am, wrote:





On Aug 9, 10:39 am, Smitty Two wrote:

In article
,

wrote:
By
keeping the water heater from coming on during the night and reheating
itself, energy is saved. Period.

We're debating too many issues at once, here, and I'm growing annoyed,
too. You think I'm crazy, I think you are. So I'm going to address this
one issue and ask you one question, and then I'm done with this thread.

I want you to set aside the agreed upon fact that water cools more
slowly as the delta t drops. (We clearly disagree on how significant
that is, in the real world water heater example. Fine, just please set
it aside for the sake of this one question.)

And I want you to set aside any notion that someone may get up in the
night and wash his hands, or that someone get up and take a shower
before the tank has fully recovered.

Now given those constraints, suppose the water in the tank drops by 15
degrees overnight. Do you think it takes less energy to heat the water
in the morning by the whole fifteen degrees, than it would take to
reheat the water three times during the night, each time it drops 5
degrees?

This is a YES or NO question!

That's a simple and straightforward questioned answered by physics.
And the answer is yes. Because by reheating it every time it drops 5
degrees, the water is maintained at a higher temp all night resulting
in more heat loss from the tank to the surroundings.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

my old gas heater devloped a leak at the top, so I turned it off till
morning.

turned it on for a quick shower in the morning.

water still nice and hot.

before buying timer first step should be checking how much water cools
over nite.

then go from there.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

any modern water heater will keep the water hot for a looong time. the
fact that they're not warm to the touch is another indication. given
the massive heat capacity of water and the minimal loss, there's not a
lot of reason for a timer unless you're trying to schedule for lower
electric rates at night or something.