Hot water conservation is always going to be an issue that landlords face. After all, between showers, heating, cooking, and laundry, every tenant you deal with will be using hot water constantly, especially during those cold winter months. In fact, about 18 percent of an average monthly utility bill goes toward warm water.

Obviously, a decrease in overall hot water use bodes well for a property’s long-term financial health and that of its landlord. In colder seasons, when tenants and appliances may overcompensate by kicking up the temperature, a balance must be struck between comfort and cost efficiency. The key to conservation, then, is understanding what factors go into the cost and use of hot water and making sure your tenants do as well.

Tenants always concern themselves with high bills that materialize from their utility usage. From a landlord’s standpoint, his focus should be on educating tenants so they’re able to make smart choices with their hot water, especially in colder conditions.

How to Winterize Your Hot Water Use

Showers distribute nearly 17 percent of the water in people’s homes. Informing your tenants about the benefits of taking shorter showers and using hot water more sparingly will save both you and your tenant grief in the long run.

The vital factor in hot water conservation is making sure your tenants understand it and apply it — which they will do, provided they understand the ways that doing so benefit them.

There are a number of things you can do to save hot water, particularly in the winter. Focusing on these specific issues allows you to avoid costly repairs and mistakes:

1. Practice appliance upkeep. Regularly inspect all of your properties’ hot water heaters. You should drain hot water heaters periodically, as sediment and minerals will build up and cut down on each unit’s efficiency.

As far as thermostats go, don’t go crazy with your hot water temperature, but know that the lower it is, the more money you save. Most water heaters are set at 140 degrees. Although cold winter weather might prompt you to keep it there, lowering that mark by 20 degrees protects landlords from big energy expenditures and residents from uncomfortably hot showers.

In order to prevent frozen pipes, you should understand their location and where they’re installed. If you live in a particularly cold area during the winter, you need to ensure your pipes are along insulated areas, not attics or garages.

Although you shouldn’t waste water, letting a faucet drip in the winter can prevent pipes from bursting. According to a recent study done by Huntsville Utilities in Alabama, this practice only costs about 5 cents’ worth of water in an eight-hour span.

Heaters and pipes aren’t going to come right out and say cold weather causes malfunctioning, so it’s up to property managers to watch appliances carefully.

2. Listen for signals. I’ve come across hot water heaters that sound as if they’re full of ping-pong balls bouncing around, which is a symptom of needing to be drained. If you don’t pay careful attention and make sure your hot water heater is being maintained, it can cause lasting damage. As long as the hot water heater is working, it can be easy to forget about it, but with periodic maintenance, it will last much longer.

Additionally, exposed pipes should be insulated to prevent them from freezing. Hot water is important in the winter, so you should make sure to keep the water system running smoothly. Water heaters can expand, contract, and sprout leaks and cracks if not properly maintained during the winter.

While some experts suggest draining the tank once per year, others recommend draining a quart of water once every three months. Water heaters tend to have a life span of about 10 years, but there can be exceptions. If your hot water heater makes popping, rattling, or banging noises and draining doesn’t seem to fix the problem, it’s time for a new unit.

That’s also true if rust is starting to show around the heater. In either case, the goal is to eliminate sediment that slows heat transfer and hampers efficiency. Reference the owner’s manual; it should provide specific advice from the manufacturer.

3. Teach your tenants. You have to get your tenants to buy into hot water conservation. If they buy in, it will lower your bills. That’s the point. You have to have different approaches for different kinds of tenants, but you have to know what speaks to them.

For instance, put to rest any ideas that leaving the bathroom door open with the shower on will heat the house during the winter. Not only is it an ineffective strategy, but it will also waste too much water. Meanwhile, the excess moisture it creates can produce mildew stains and mold throughout the house.

We start leaving information packets for tenants after we install our products, depending on the demographic. For a high-income client base, we focus on the idea of doing your part — in other words, not using water wastefully, not using the toilet as a garbage can, and generally being aware of your usage.

For the low-income one, we take a different approach, saying that if water costs keep going up, eventually, landlords will have to raise rent. This gets the point across that conserving hot water usage is mutually beneficial for both the tenant and the landlord.

Don’t hesitate to call a plumber if you suspect you may need one. Be aware of complaints from tenants, and treat them seriously. If they’ve had issues with heat or the water in the past, you should address them as soon as possible — otherwise, you’re looking at potentially expensive repairs and lost money down the road.

The most important aspects of hot water conservation are understanding and educating. Although the information needed to conserve hot water is straightforward and easy to understand, it won’t be of any use to your tenants unless they’re taught to properly apply certain methods and correctly use the information that’s available to them.

Attentive property maintenance means being able to properly forecast or address any potential issues. With the toll the winter months can take on a property, why not get out in front of it by protecting a home’s most valued resource and taking the necessary steps to keep residents comfortable?

It can be daunting trying to remember all the small things you can do to conserve hot water, but the savings you’ll see will be much greater than the labor of your efforts.