Electric Water Heater

Mark Zoeteman_2

We have an electric water heater in a AZ home that has just been replaced with a new GE unit. When hot water is used in home, a banging or clicking noise is heard for some time. There is a plastic check ball in cold water line entering heater. Could this be preventing hot water from expanding as would happen when water is heated or could there be an internal electric element that has come loose inside unit?

Paul Fredricks_3

The way you describe it, noise when you use the hot water, makes it sound like expansion noise. Does the noise start as you start flowing water and then subside after a minute or so? If so, then you pipes are heating up and pressing against the wood in the house as they expand. Sometimes when a unit is replaced things don't fall the same way they used to.

Larry Weingarten

One approach...

... would be to remove the heat trap nipple on the inlet and put in a lined steel nipple or a brass nipple. If the noise is gone, you've found the trouble. A new heat trap nipple should not be creating this sort of noise though.

Another approach would be to put a pressure gauge on the drain of the heater and watch it as the tank is used and as it reheats. If you can see pressure fluctuations associated with the sounds, you know it is the heat trap or some other restriction in the cold supply.

Yours, Larry