DIYbanter - View Single Post - Turning off HW heater while on vacation, lower T-stat or just leavepilot on?

Tony Hwang

wrote:
On Aug 20, 12:13 pm, "DGDevin" wrote:
Mikepier wrote:
I'm going away for a week and I wanted to put my gas HW heater in
"vacation mode". In the past I noticed that even if I turn down the T-
stat dial, it still comes on, although the water temp is lower than
the usual 140 deg. Am I better off just putting the gas valve to
"pilot" instead of "on", that way I know for sure it will stay off?
One-forty? Yikes. We had ours set to one-twenty but we've turned it down a
bit from that after noticing that the "Vacation" setting was just about hot
enough. When you think about it, if you have to add cold water to make your
morning shower comfortable then why spend money to make the water hotter
than you can stand in the first place? It's like driving with the parking
brake on....

Well, not exactly. Most of the extra energy is not lost. If the
water is hotter, you mix less of it with the cold to get the desired
temp. That also means that you can take more showers at your desired
temp before running out of hot water. The energy that is lost is
mostly the additional amount due to standby losses at the higher temp.

Most of the dishwasher manufacturers call for water that is at least
130.
Hi,
DW is not a problem, most has it's own water heater. When I need to fill
Jacuzzi tub I can't do it if the water is 120 deg. At 140 I can. Even
with two tanks, when 3 or 4 bathrooms going some times...... We also
use stored rain water for indoor plants. We have half dozen rain barrels
around house.