I will be going over some basic trouble shooting of electric water heaters, not gas, not tankless, but electric. If you need information on the other types of water heaters I am sure you can find a related hub about them, but as for now I am going to cover everything that you need to know about electric water heaters. In this hub when I say “water heater”, I am going to be referring to a 30 gallon electric water heater. If you can take in all of this knowledge, the same principles will apply for a 60 gallon or 90 gallon water heater. The water heater is powered off 240 volts, it contains two heating elements and two thermostats, only one heating element is used at a time. One at the bottom and another at the top, when the bottom reaches the set temperature, the heating element shuts off, and then the top one kicks on. Then the cycle keeps going. If you are experiencing hot water for only a couple of minutes, then you may need to adjust the temperature on the thermostats, make sure that you secure the power to the water heater before you take off the access panels to the thermostats though.

How Do I know When I Need To Replace My Water Heater?

The first sign of your water heater going bad, it will start to leak water, usually from the bottom of the water heater. The leaks usually start as a pinhole leak, and get worst as the days go on. This is a common problem for water heaters that are anywhere from 10-15 years old. The easiest way to tell if your water heater is leaking, is that you will probably start to see some rust marks coming down from the water heater. Now this is different if you have a hose that is leaking, then you would just need to replace the hose itself. If the water heater is acting up and not heating right, then there is either a problem with one of the breakers, one of the heating elements, or one of the thermometers that are inside the panel of the water heater. Those are the main parts that are inside, and they are common to mess up every once in awhile.There are many places that you can go, especially online to find cheap water heaters. Find out how much water you really use, if you have a big house, with a washing machine, dishwasher, and it is common for 2 showers to be on at the same time, you will need a 50 gallon plus water heater.

How To Replace A Water Heater Hose

Before you go on and try to replace a water heater hose, you better have some general plumbing knowledge, and if you do not follow the correct steps to do so you can flood your house in the matter of minutes. So the first thing that you need to do before you start loosening connections, is too turn off the water that is going into the water heater. Open a few faucets on the hot water side only, make sure there is no water coming out of them, if there is no water coming out then you will know that the hot water is shut off. Now we can replace our leaking water heater hose. Some hoses can be disconnected with a pair of pliers or a wrench, just make sure that you have the right type of hose connections to make this work. Sometimes the hoses are connected by solder, in this case you will have to cut the pipe and detach the hose. If this is the case the new hose can be connected by either a compression fitting, or you can solder the new hose back on. If you have no experience soldering copper piping, don’t try it, leave it to the pros. Once you have your hose connected you can open the inlet water valve (hot side) to the heater, just make sure that you have a faucet valve that is open somewhere in the house to relieve some of the pressure.

Checking The Heating Elements and Thermostat

There are a lot of articles on the web that explain how you can check the heating elements, I have maybe read 1 or 2 that tell you how to do it correctly, the others are all crap. First thing you need to do is have a multi-meter in hand, and it has to be able to check OHMS, or continuity. But before we start undoing access panels and all of that, check the breaker box and make sure there isn’t a tripped breaker. If the breaker is good let’s move to the next step. Make sure that there is sufficient power going into the water heater, you should have 2 wires going into the water heater that have 120 volts each, if you are not experienced with working with electrical, do not even bother, it’s too dangerous, get a professional or somebody that has experience. If you are not getting a full 240 volts, then there is a problem with the breaker, it may need to be replaced, I will not be going over this in this article, it’s a whole other can of worms, if sit is requested though I will write a quick article on how to do this in the comments. Okay, got 240 volts to the water heater, so we are good there, so let’s get to testing the heating elements and thermostat.

Now secure the power to the water heater. Take off the access panels, usually secured by a couple of hex headed screws. Look for the thermostat first, remove any insulation that may be blocking it, look for a little red button, if the button is out that means that the thermostat is tripped. Pushing the button back in will fix this problem in most cases, if it just pops back out when you turn the power back on then the thermostat needs to be replaced. Now to test the thermostat, we have the power off!! This method is also how to test a water heater element also. Remove one of the wires from the thermostat, you can remove all of them if you want but it is only necessary to remove one. We are going to set our multi-meter to OHMS, now take one of the probes on your meter and stick it on the first screw, the one without the wire connected, holding that there, with the other probe go and test each screw, each connection, if your meter is reading .1, that means that the circuit is open, this is good, this means that your thermostat or element is good. If your meter is reading something like .003, it will eventually drop to 0, which means that the circuit is closed, which means that you will have to replace the thermostat or the element. Below, at the bottom of this article, is a picture of me testing a thermostat, now can anybody tell me if this is bad or good?

If the thermostat is bad just replace it, you already have the power off, so just hook up the new one exactly how the old one was hooked up, and set the temperature accordingly. If the heating element is bad then replacing that is a bit different, I will explain how to do this in the next paragraph.

Replacing A Water Heater Element

So you should have tested the element as I said to do in the paragraph above, once confirmed the element is bad, let’s get to work. Shut off the power to the water heater, turn the water off to the water heater, check to make sure the hot water is secured completely by opening up some hot water vavles throughout the house. Lots of people recommend draining the water heater before changing out the element, this can be done by hooking a garden hose up to the drain valve and ciphering the end of the water hose to create a vacuum. Then you wait 30 minutes to an hour for it to drain. Or you can listen to me and save yourself an hour. Just grab a few towels, and lay them around the water heater. When you are pulling the element out, water will come out of the water heater, but it is not pressurized, so it comes out very slow, if you swap the elements out quickly, you will barely get any water on the floor or carpet, but that’s what the towels are for, more than enough to soak up the little bit of water that will come out.

Unhook the couple of wires on the old element, you will need the appropriate size lug wrench to loosen the element, have the new heating element in handy, these elements come with a rubber o-ring on them, so you will not need to use any Teflon tape. Unscrew the old element and pull it out, water is going to be pouring out , so make the swap quick, tighten down on the new element. Hook up the wires as they were before. Put back any insulation you may have removed and put the access panel back into place. Turn the breaker on to the water heater. You are done.

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