Are you sharpening your pencil in order to start creating your household budget for the next year? If you're not too happy with your invoices from last season, especially when it comes to your energy costs, it may be time for you to replace your hot water system. After all, these are only supposed to last for about a decade, and the chances are that yours is older than that. What do you need to consider when thinking about the installation of a new hot water system?

Are You an Average Family?

While a typical Australian home is quite spacious, the original hot water system is usually only designed for average consumption. The first thing you need to do, therefore, is consider how many people you have in the house. If you are only two – and likely to remain that way – then you can replace with a smaller capacity system. However, if you have a full family and are planning for your parents to come and live with you as well, you will need to upgrade.

What's Your Workload?

The next thing you need to consider is how many appliances you have and how often they are used. If you like your crockery to be squeaky clean, then maybe you're using your dishwasher twice every day. Washing machines also use a lot of hot water and could overwhelm your smaller system if everything is run concurrently.

Energy-Saving Components

As you are looking to upgrade, you should allocate some of your budget towards fitting new taps and shower heads. Many of these older components are not designed to help you save energy and you can achieve the same objective with far less water by using the best tools in the marketplace. Just consider how many taps you have in the home in total and you'll probably be quite surprised.

Going with the Flow

Try and figure out when everybody requires access to a shower or bath and then consider when other appliances are being used at the same time. Not only may you need to schedule the timing carefully to make sure that hot water is always available, but you may likely need to fit upgraded components to the system, to make sure that the flow rate is constantly strong.

Installing Everything Properly

Remember that hot water systems can be very reliable and provide you with years of almost constant use. However, it's best if you have them professionally installed at the start, to ensure that you don't run into any problems.