Are Your Hot Water Pipes Insulated? Mine Weren't, and Gosh Do I Feel Foolish.

What am I, an idiot?!  Politely don't answer that.

For all the "care" I allegedly have for this planet, I haven't had insulated copper pipes.  Eight years I've been living here.  Eight years, no insulation on my hot water pipes.  I'm disgusted.  Am I an idiot or what?  Politely continue not answering that.

It's exactly like this.

Shake it off.  We learn, we grow, we et cetera.  I studied the labyrinthine maze of copper tubes that hang from the ceiling in my musty cellar, right-angling every-which-way like that one screensaver.  Some pipes carry hot water.  Some cold.  Some inexplicably do nothing, which may come in handy during a future Home Alone-esque booby-trapping, the specifics of which I can't yet envision.

Oh, it's already remedied.  Don't you worry about that.  Yeah, about thirty bucks worth of polyethylene foam sleeves, and my copper's nothing short of cozy.  It was remarkably easy.  They comes in 6-foot lengths - 1" diameter or 3/4" diameter, both of which I needed about thirty feet worth.  A 6' length runs you about two and a half bucks.  They're pre-slitted along one side making it a breeze just to slip them over the pipe.  They also have adhesive strips so they seal nice and tight.


It's a long video, yes, but with a host like Passionate Pat, ten minutes feels like a mere twelve.

Yup.  Just yesterday morning I heard my furnace a-purrin', so I descended, felt all the pipes, and whichever ones were hot got a brand new sweater.  And it all seemed very obvious to me - if the metal itself is emanating heat, that heat's being stolen from my water!  Same goes for the hot water tank itself.  Give it a bear hug and if you suddenly feel a rush of second-degree burniness, your tank needs insulation.  Most new tanks won't be hot to the touch, and thus can go au natural.

How much money will this save?  Well, considering the average home (two adults, two children, and heavy, heavy debt) spends about $630 annually on hot water, and this foam should last a good ten to fifteen years, even a mere one percent efficiency boost saves twice the cost of the insulation itself.  And if that savings is more like fifteen percent, it's like someone knocking on your door in ten years time and handing you ten crisp Benjamins.  (They're worth more crisp, obviously.)