What is a geyser blanket?
Using a geyser blanket keeps your geyser warm. Your geyser is basically a big kettle. It heats up water on the inside and when the water reaches the set temperature, the geyser switches off. As heat escapes from the water due to natural thermodynamics, the water in the geyser cools down. When this happens, the geyser thermostat switches on to re-heat the water back to the set temperature. This can happen up to 20 times per day and as a result, your geyser is using electricity when you DON’T need hot water and it’s wasting power due to the heat loss from the water. More importantly, this ongoing on/off cycle is where you use a lot of electricity – when you DON’T NEED HOT WATER. This is where the geyser blanket comes into play.
How the geyser blanket works
Think of yourself when you sleep. You keep a blanket around you to keep your body heat in and so keep you warm. If you didn’t have the blanket , you would get cold. The geyser blanket is made from RECYCLED PET (recycled 2l Soft drink bottles) and is there to keep the heat where it belongs – in your geyser. The extra insulation provided by the geyser blanket prevents that heat loss from the water and keeps it hotter for much longer and saves you electricity and money in the process. As it stands, your geyser can lose around 1° C per hour or more, depending on the air temperature of the air around it. The colder the air temperature, the faster the geyser loses heat. If you geyser is controlled using a geyser timer and the geyser is off for around 6-8 hours, when it switches back on , it could have lost between 6-8 degrees and so has to reheat 150l of water by 6-8 degrees- that takes a lot of electricity. With a geyser blanket, , the geyser may only lose around 2°C to 3°C instead of 6°C to 8°C and that takes MUCH less electricity to do. Do the maths and it is easy to see that the geyser blanket saves a noticeable amount of heat loss.
How much can you save with just a geyser blanket?
The research indicates that using a geyser blanket can save around 10% to 14% of your electricity usage, so if we use the same model as the geyser timers, this would be around R250-00 per month.
