With the ever-increasing costs of gas and electricity, there is much that can be done to avoid waste as hot water travels to your kitchen sink, reports The Telegraph this week. If you find you are constantly turning on the hot tap at your kitchen sink, one way to save cash is to fit electrical trace heating tape to the hot-water pipe run, together with a controlling thermostat. You then need to cover your hot water pipe with thick foam sleeve insulation. This will enable you to maintain the water in the pipe at whatever temperature you wish and you will receive an instant hot water supply whenever you turn on your hot tap, with water from your hot water cylinder flowing in behind it. The trace heating will then only turn on to maintain the temperature of the pipe at your set level. The only downside with this method is that you may have issues with accessing the pipe along its whole length, if it runs below floors or disappears behind kitchen cupboards. It is important that the trace heating tape is fitted in one continuous length, as well as being fully insulated. An alternative solution for occasional hot-water use (or if your home is fitted with a combi boiler), is to fit an electric water heater underneath your kitchen sink, such as an Ariston 10 or 15-litre unit. It is wasteful to feed this from the hot-water supply as, by the time you have turned the tap off, after using it for a short time, the hot water from the cylinder will simply have filled the pipe run and will then cool down, wasting energy and money. With a combi boiler, the boiler will have fired up, using fuel, only to push the cold water sitting in its heat exchanger through into the pipe. To fit an electric water heater, disconnect and cap-off the hot water pipe under your kitchen sink and then connect a T joint to feed the heater from the cold water pipe. The Telegraph warns that trace heating should be fitted by a registered electrician and under-sink water heaters should still be installed by a qualified plumber.