Water Heater....leave on or as needed?

blackcows wrote:

MarkTwain wrote:

blackcows wrote:
Do you leave your hot water heater on when camping or on and off as needed?

Turn it on and leave it on! 1 person can use 4-5 gallons of heat water per shower, so the rest of the family will have to wait for your water heater to heat up the tank again:( The savings by turning off the heater after your shower is minimal but the inconvenience of waiting for hot water is maximum.

Well that makes me a bit nervous. I only have a 45 gallon tank and 3 ladies that shower. I guess I need to be more worried about water than Propane ?? Most of the horse shows we go to have electric but no water so we only have the water we haul. Guess Propane is the least of my worries.

Long hair can be an issue. Otherwise there is no reason ladies should need more shower water than men. Without access to an endless water supply, a shower is not a form of entertainment. I have done lots of desert camping and find that being alone I will use about 3 gallons of water a day. Roughly 2 gallons go to drinking, cooking and dish washing. The remain gallon goes to a shower. Wet down, soap up and rinse off. That is it. My wife uses maybe a half gallon more for rinsing hair. Together we are at about 5-7 gallons a day for everything. One way to conserve water is to heat the water to the correct temperature for a shower so that adjusting the temperature is not needed. I use a small electronic cooking timer. Depending on the initial water temperature, it takes 20 minutes plus or minus 5 minutes to reach the correct temperature. We only heat water once a day. For dish washing we heat water on the stove. For just a few dishes, which is typical, I heat a little water on the stove often in the pan that was used for cooking. Dish washing has the potential to waste a lot of water. We use paper plates if we really need to conserve.