Is your hot water too hot to touch? Then try reducing the temperature.

What temperature should water be when it leaves the hot tap? If it is too cool then that is a legionella risk – if too hot then that is a scalding risk and wasting energy of course.

Guidance from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) suggests that hot water must be stored at 60°C or above and exit the hot tap at 50°C within one minute of opening it. It also suggests cold water should be below 20°C.

If you use gas for water heating then any hotter than 60°C for storage (or 55°C at the tap) is essentially burning more gas than is needed, releasing unnecessary carbon dioxide emissions. Since even 50°C actually feels pretty hot at the tap, the likelihood is that if your hot tap is delivering really hot water at 65 or 70 degrees then you will always be needing to cool it with cold water anyway. So the extra gas burnt was not useful to us.

For other ways to save without spending have a look here.