SJ-80 5mm Polyethylene Water Heater Blanket Insulation, Fits 20-80 Gallon Tanks, Energy Star Certified, Easy to Install & Clean, No Fiberglass, Non-Toxic

Fits great. My heater has the controls on the front side and an overflow unit on top, so I had to do some creative patching, but it looks fine. There were more than enough product and tape for my 50-gallon heater. Hopefully this will help in this cold snap. There are adhesive strips on the cover, and it also includes metal tape. It was very easy to install, looks to be of good quality and a decent thickness.

I have my water heater on a timer that has some strict requirements that I can measure. It has to come up to 140 F. Then stay hot enough to get through a shower late at night and run almost entirely out of hot water after the shower. To meet these goals required 54 total minutes of ON time with no insulation on the water heater at all. I only have a 30 gallon tank so I nearly wrapped the outside twice, plus the top once. The timer now requires 38 minutes of ON time to hit the same objectives. That's a 16 minute savings for a 3800 watt heater per day. I pay 24 cents per kw, so it saved 16/60H X 3.800Kw X 365 X $0. 24/KwH = $88.76 saved per year. 16/54=29% saved The downside was hours of installation, as my heater is in a confined cabinet, and it also takes time to cut openings for the electrical panels and then retape them. Because of the confined space, all in it took about 5 hours. However, my water heater is inside my living space, I live in a hot climate year round, and all of the lost heat has to be cooled. The kitchen in which my water heater is located is about one degree colder when the air conditioning is held constant. The reduction in cooling savings is probably an additional $90 per year. So $180 per year for a 30 gallon tank is pretty significant. Note that most of these commenters installed it incorrectly. This isn't a "blanket", it requires an air gap between the water heater and this wrap. The product comes with slits that allow you to fold it back twice in one direction and two sets of double sided tape on either two edges (for the bottom piece you HAVE to install first) or one edge that becomes the TOP of the upper piece that you must install over the bottom piece. Before you install it, remove just the OUTER paper backing of one entire edge. Now fold the outer part back and then fold it back again, tucking it underneath itself. The net result is the second paper backing is now on the edge, and the edge is raised to provide the proper air gap. Do this with the other outer edge if there is paper backing. Now it is ready to install by removing what used to be the inner paper backing and apply the edges snugly to the water heater, leaving an air gap between the material between the raised outer edges and the water heater. The air gap provides about 90% of the insulating capability of the product. Ignoring this will mean losing 90% of the savings. Next install the other pieces the same way with the smaller top piece only having one raised outer edge to allow you to install that raised outer edge on top, with the bottom being installed over the raised outer edge of the piece you installed previously below it. Next tape everything, and not with the included tape. The included tape is worthless, you'll need to buy your own aluminum tape. Taping everything after I taped the top down actually generated about 1/5 of the savings I outlined above, as I did not initially tape everything as it seemed snug. Then later I taped everything and was able to reduce the timer settings further.

Just installed the blanket so cannot yet speak to any improved effeciency or cost savings but it was fairly easy to install and plenty of material was provided in order to fit my 40 gallon water heater (I found that it is an extra large 40 gallon and other blankets were not sufficient). The self adhesive tape on the insulation panels was the only problem I encountered. My water heater is in a small closet in my garage so getting the insulation around the heater was a bit of a challenge (which I expected) but trying to get the tape backing peeled off was very challenging as it kept tearing off. I finally just gave up on the self adhesive tape and as long as it stayed in place I didn't worry about it too much. I use all of the aluminum foil tape to ensure it stayed in place and am pretty confident it will. The insulation was easy to cut but it was also easy to rip as it was not really durable so some caution is advised. Overall, I was able to install it by myself with minimal effort (took about 30 minutes, which included cutting the pieces to fit and taping the snot out of it to ensure it stayed in place. Now I am just waiting to see if the money and effort was worth it in my gas bill.

We decided to choose the foil-wrap style of water heater blanket for several reasons. 1. The look is very neat. 2. The water heater is in a closet that protects it from the open air. 3. The fiberglass blankets can be unruly to fit, and the open edges can become frayed, get dirty and look messy. After reading the installation instructions provided with the product, I also watched a YouTube installation video made by ProDex to watch the process for installing the Smart Jacket blanket. We only needed a pen, a razor blade, and measuring tape. Step 1. (Image 1) We dusted and wiped-down all water heater surfaces and removed the bolts securing the safety straps to the water heater. This allowed full unblocked access all the way around the water heater. Step 2. The instructions indicate to start at the bottom and work your way up the water heater. We decided to place the seam on the right-hand side of the tank because it was most accessible and still not visible. The first placement took the longest to fit the blanket around the gas control valve & igniter, the air intake cover, and the drain-cock. The blanket is easy to cut with a razor and straight-edge, making clean, neat cuts that fit together tightly for taping. Step 3. (Image 2): We made a couple of templates to get the fit behind the gas control valve assembly and around the tank drain-cock correct. When installing the lower blanket, we got it in place first, and placed two pieces of tape at the top and bottom of the seam, pulling it tight together. Once in place, we ran a strip of metal tape the length of the seam. In general, we did not use the two rows of self-adhesive strips on the back of the blanket to attach the blanket to the tank. We didn't want to adhere anything to the labels on the tank. However, once the bottom blanket was in place, we used the bottom row of adhesive strip. We peeled the backing off the bottom row only, pressing the adhesive strip to the bottom of the tank to anchor the bottom of the blanket to the tank and hold it in place. Step 4. (Image 3). We fitted the second blanket section, pulling it snug against the top edge of the bottom blanket. Once pulled tight and tacked with tape, we ran a strip of metal tape the length of the seam only. We did not tape the second section to the first. It's not going anywhere and there won't be heat loss. The two straight edges of the blankets meet evenly. Step 5. (Image 4): The instructions say to put the water heater crown on last. It's easiest if you fit it first and trim the crown to the sides of the tank. This was easy to do using a sharp razor blade, using the side of the tank as a guide. We had to make a couple of templates to get the holes in the right places and know where to cut the slit in order to fit the crown around the vent-hood and incoming (cold) and outgoing (hot) water pipes. Step 6. (Image 5): We precut the last piece of blanket, only needing a piece 9" tall. We also made a template to fit the blanket around the temperature pressure relief valve (TP valve). First, we fitted the blanket around the tank, around the TP valve and tacked the seam at the center and bottom, leaving the top seam open. Like we did at the bottom, we only used the very top adhesive strip in this case. Starting at one edge, we removed the paper from the adhesive strip a few inches at a time, pressing it against the tank and against the raw edge of the insulation crown piece. Be careful pulling the paper off the adhesive, it had a tendency to tear. Once done, then we sealed the side seam of the last top blanket piece with a strip of metal tape. We did not run metal tape on the two seams around the circumference of the tank. They fit tightly and if the blanket must be removed, it's easiest to have one seam on the right to cut. The job took about 3-hours.