Quote:
Originally Posted by Piwoslaw
Can you put a timer on the heater? Since you can predict when you'll need, and not need, hot water, then have it turn on a few minutes before then, then stay off for the rest of the night/day.
Or you could superinsulate it, so that with the lowered temperature it would turn on only 1-2 times a day.
One of the "cheap" things I learned from my Grandma is how to use the small remains of a bar of soap: squeeze it into the next bar. You might need to wet both to make it stick, but extends the soap's life by 2-4 days  |
Actually, its hot enough here in Texas that a lot of the heat in the water is from sunlight.
The water heater is in a small closet located on the patio. It get hours of direct sun.
In winter I will turn the heat up a notch. It worked alright in winter ( winter ...what's that ;-) .) but the water was meerly room temperature.
No modifications are allowed to the apartment.
Speaking if this sort of thing, I wanted to paint my cabinet walls in the kitchen yet knew that I couldn't actually paint onto the wood cabinets themselves.
Im surprised to say that I actually succeeded at an idea : use blue painters tape !
I used the wide 2" variety of blue painters tape and painted onto the tape itself .
I then applied the strips of painted tape to the cabinets .
After over a year, I have pulled off the tape and there is little to no residue .
To paint, I used waterbased tempera poster paint. It gave a nice matte finish look....and its Eco friendly. To my surprise, I painted my aluminum belly pan with this stuff as well as regular art acrylics ( the kind you find in tubes for less than $ 3 . Despite being on the BARE UNPRIMED metal over a year , the paint is still on !
Surprised the hell out of me ! ( I just wanted to see what it looked like with black paint. I never thought it would actually stick ! )
A lot of things that I do have the side benefit of being Eco friendly - less energy consumption, less pollution from driving, etc. so its not all about being "cheap"
It's a shame that to not be labeled " cheap " you usually have to be wasteful in some way.
I'll try and remember the soap idea.