Turn down the temperature in your water heater
 

There are two advantages to this idea. First you save energy second may not apply to everyone but it will apply to many of you. Have you ever been been in the shower when someone flushed a toilet somewhere else in the house and been unpleaseantly surprised by some extra hot water? Set the temperature of the water heater so that when you take a shower you set it all the way hot with no cold water mixed in. The toilet toilet flushing problem will go away.

I like this one. I usually
 

I like this one. I usually insulate the hot water pipe coming out of the hot water heater for about 10ft and then you can turn down the temp. quite a bit (depending on what temp it is set at).

i have mine set to turn off
 

i have mine set to turn off completely from 10pm-6am. much better than turning it down when you have a small tank and lots of use for hot water.

I'm personally waiting for
 

I'm personally waiting for the day when my water heater dies and I can get a tankless water heater.

yea tankless rocks!
 

yea tankless rocks!

our tank blew due to being
 

our tank blew due to being rusted. We installed a tankless system like a month ago. Our tankless system also works in conjunction with a solar system. Solar system heats up the water too during the day.

Lowering temps
 

Lower temperature means lower total energy so you could run out of hot water - also if you lower to less than about 135F you run the risk of having nasty stuff start growing in the tank. Other than that turning off the heat works well - we used to fire up the oil burner for 5 minutes in the morning to take morning showers and leave it off the rest of the day - saves a real lot of oil in the summer.