With the price of oil skyrocketing, I thought it might be worthwhile to put a timer on my hot water heater. Is there any downside to doing this? It's a 120 volt feed - can I just put a simple timer in the circuit? Any way to calculate the savings? The manufacturer's rep said the standby heat loss was 3.5% - it's a 32 gallon Bock.
Savings from a timer on any hot water system will depend upon how the system is used in relation to the timer.
Years ago when I was single, I had a 40 gallon low boy electric WH. I disconnected the lower element and set the top thermostat for shower temperature (I had to add no cold for shower temperature). I would turn on the breaker 20 minutes before the shower and then turn the breaker off before showering. You definitely knew when the shower was over.
This left the WH at ambient temperature; no heat loss. If I had left the breaker on during the shower and for 30 minutes after before turning it off, I would have had a half tank of water to radiate energy away.
So for the most savings you need to organize HW usage in compact time periods and set the timer to turn off when some use is still on going. The object is to finish using HW just as no HW is available. If you have the need to use HW frequently through the day a timer will be tough with only a 32 gallon tank.
I have a 105 gallon electric Marathon and heat it off-peak only at $0.047/kWh. I don't know what you pay for oil but that amount of energy (in HW) costs me only $1.13 in electricity.
