by Joe Brooks

Created on: August 28, 2010

Setting the temperature for your home water heater can be as easy as turning a dial. But what setting should you use? There are several factors to consider. As is so often the case, there are risk factors to be considered, and in the end you must decide what is best for yourself and your family.

One factor is safety, as hot water involves the risk of scalding. Those most at risk are small children, developmentally disabled individuals, and people with serious mobility limitations. Very hot water can cause serious harm quite quickly. Water at the top of the range of home water heaters, 140 – 150 degrees F, will cause serious burns in seconds. Water at around 120 degrees will take minutes of exposure to cause burns.

Another consideration is energy consumption, and the savings in power bills you gain by turning down the water heater. An estimation would be that you can save four percent on power use for each ten degrees you lower the water temperature. Using that estimate, lowering the water heater temperature from a high 150 degrees Fahrenheit to the EPA recommended 120 degrees F could save as much as twelve percent in energy use. That could be a considerable savings on your power bill, over time.

However, there is another important factor to consider when deciding on a setting for your water heater. That is health. The water that is safest for at-risk groups as far as direct contact with skin is not ideal for disinfection and disease organism control. Most modern dishwashers have a preheating system, so the water used to wash dishes is at 140 degrees, adequate for cleaning and sanitizing dishes. Older models, however, may lack this feature. It is important to know this when choosing your water heater setting.

Then there is Legionnaire's disease to consider. While you see the EPA recommending that water heaters be set at 120 degrees F to save energy, OSHA recommends a tank temperature of 140 degrees F. This is because at lower temperatures, your water heater can become an incubator for the Legionella bacteria, the cause of Legionnaire's disease. With the ideal growth range being 95 to 115 °F, you can see how that would be so. This may be an important consideration if your family includes those in the most at-risk groups, including older people or those with serious illnesses or impaired immune systems.

Setting the temperature for the water heater is not difficult. Gas water heaters usually have a exposed dial, easily reachable. For an electric water

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