When it comes to your power bill, did you know that the hot water you’re using accounts for almost 30% of it? It may not seem like a lot but if you knew a few tips to keep your hot water usage down, you could save quite a bit of money each month. Although these tips might take a bit more effort than just simply watching how much hot water you’re using, they will be worthwhile.

The first step to save money on hot water is to do some tests and maintenance around the house by checking your flow rate. If you find that your shower fills a 10 litre bucket in less than a minute then you need to replace your shower head. An inexpensive way to do that is buying a shower flow restrictor to ensure that the flow is only 9 litres a minute. When you reduce your water by 1 litre a minute, you could be saving at least $80 per year. Another tip is purchasing a flow control aerators for the taps in your house to ease the tap flow. They’re quite cheap and cause you to use half the water but still have good pressure, perfect for taps over sinks or tubs that you’re not using to fill up very often. If you have a dripping tap, make sure you replace the washer or fitter because you could be wasting around 7 litres of water a day and almost $40 worth of energy per year.

So even with the tips above you could be saving $120 per year, here are some other tips on how to keep the heat in your house instead of out. If your hot water cylinders and pipes are not wrapped, make sure that you wrap them in specially designed insulation. This may cost you some extra money but in the long run you will start saving at least $85 a year, just take note that you can’t use cylinder wrap on gas water systems. The next tip is to check your hot water temperature, it should be 60C at the cylinder and no more than 55C at the tap, if this is not the case, make sure you call an electrician or plumber to change your thermostat. It might be costing you $30 a year extra if you have your temperature an extra 10C.

The last few tips are just about getting into hot water habits that could possibly end up saving you some money! The first is washing your clothes in cold water, at about four loads a week, which would save you around $70 a year. The best and probably most obvious is to cut the long showers, each minute you add to your shower is about $90 dollars a year. Lastly, do your best to rinse your dishes with cold water and only run your dishwasher when it’s completely full. So, overall, if you used all of these tips you could be potentially saving around $300 dollars a year!