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.

Works great. Very easy to install with easy to follow instructions. Keeps the water heater elements from kicking on as often. Was really nice when the recent 2026 winter storm knocked the power out all weekend and we were on generator power.