Remember that your geyser is the #1 electricity guzzler in your home

You can save up to 10% by doing nothing more than turning down your geyser thermostat a notch or two! Turn the thermostat down to the lowest temperature you're comfortable with. What's the point of setting it to scalding hot when you have to mix in cold water to your shower to lower the temperature? Start off at 60 degrees.

Contrary to what some people say, this does not use more hot water. (I’ve read reports that people tend to use up more hot water when their thermostat are turned down) Hot water is hot water. If your hot water is less hot, you simply will use less cold water to mix it with the hot water. You don’t shower twice because your water is less hot.

The problem is when you have a family of four, turning down the thermostat too much, will mean that you will run out of hot water faster. My solution is to make an effort to experiment a little - turn down the thermostat a notch. If you get no complaints from the kids, turn it down again -- and again, until they start complaining. Then turn it back up half a notch. That should give you the compromise you want between saving energy and saving tempers.

Does it pay to install a timer?

There’s a misconception that you should not switch off your geyser to save electricity. Here are the facts – as I see them.

There is no easy answer to this question. Saving electricity by switching off the geyser depends on THREE critical factors.

1. How many times do you use water from the geyser?
2. How old is your geyser? (older geysers lose heat faster),
3. What temperature is your thermostat set at?

If nobody is draining water from the geyser during the day while you're at work, switch it off!

If you set the time-switch to "on" for approximately 90 minutes in the early morning, and again for 90 minutes in the afternoon before peak time, you can count on saving anything between 10% and 25%.

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But don't do it only because you can save money! Do it because you'll be contributing by freeing up power for other purposes, helping to reduce outages, reducing power station emissions and fossil fuel consumption.

Fact is that saving electricity is possible if you install a time-switch - and here's why! During the day while you are away at work nobody is using the water in the geyser. The water in a geyser loses heat very slowly, which means that by the time you get home, the timer would of heated the relatively warm water for 90 minutes, so the water will be hot. If you invest in a geyser blanket it will be even hotter. This keeps the water hotter for longer during non-use, and reduces energy use by 10-15% -- this means that your geyser thermostat will stay off for 10-15% longer.

If your geyser is the 150 liter model, you'll have 100 liters of hot water in the evening, before the water goes cold. By setting the timer for, say 4 in the morning, you'll again have all the hot water you need for the morning.

What makes a timer attractive is that whilst time-switches are not typically designed as energy saving devices, they are relatively inexpensive to install. It's a quick job for an electrician if you're not comfortable doing the installation yourself. An electrician will charge you somewhere between R400.00-R500.00 excluding the cost of the timer. You can pick up a time-switch for around R350.00.
The whole job should end up costing R900. Contact Code Wired if you're interested in having a time-switch installed. Time installation from R450.00 excluding the timer.

I'll try to illustrate how this saving is achieved in the charts below;

Example #1: No timer on geyser

Example #2: Using a timer for 1.5 hours in the morning & 1.5 hours in the afternoon.

Will this affect my hot water?

If you have four teenagers around the house, for example, you'll use a lot more water and because you will be frequently draining your geyser, this excercise may not save you any money. That's because re-heating a full geyser from scratch takes up more electricity than keeping it on at a lower temperature. So you see, there's no short yes and no answer as to whether you should switch your geyser on or off. Read about the new intelligent geyser control timer.