water heater

Glenn_3

What did I do wrong?

Got called out on elec wh , no hot water

2nd floor town house

Breaker off, tank is cold , pulled covers off, turn breaker on, checked top element, got 220 ok.

checked for amps ,none so ok, drain tank pull both elements out , replaced, filled tank, checked for leaks, none checked for amps at top element, good. checked for leaks again, ok closed up and moved on.

several hours later boss calls, water leaking into room below!! told him only thing I can think of is that safety blew.

Sent another guy , he gets there and finds safety dumping water like crazy.

Upper thermostat would not shut off. High limit did not pop off. He breaks open therm. and finds contacts on therm completely welded fast, also finds the contacts on high limit completely welded fast?????? HUH???


I can understand why contacts on therm would stick but I've never heard of it happening to the limit switch.

Water heater is only 2 years old

How many times have you seen the upper therm go bad?

Would you have done anything different than I did?

BTW the breaker was turned off, not tripped

Steve_35

It sounds like you walked into a problem without getting all the info. We try not to do a lot of W/H stuff but we do get involved from time to time for existing customers.

My guess is that water has been too hot for a while. The method of controlling this was to turn off the breaker. It sounds like there may be or have been a loose or poor connection somewhere that's causing the contacts to weld shut. I'd say it's HIGHLY unlikely that both were defective.

As far as what I would have doen differently, I want more information. Is your water completely cold, luke warm or hot like normal but just not for very long? If cold, did the water get unusually hot before it got cold?

With these questions you canairly closey isolate the problem. In this case the questions may have elicited the information that the water got danged hot and someone turned the breaker off. Liekly the high limit problem wouldn't have been detected but the t-stats would have been changed. FWIW, I always change the uper and lower t-stat together.

Steve_35

It sounds like you walked into a problem without getting all the info. We try not to do a lot of W/H stuff but we do get involved from time to time for existing customers.

My guess is that water has been too hot for a while. The method of controlling this was to turn off the breaker. It sounds like there may be or have been a loose or poor connection somewhere that's causing the contacts to weld shut. I'd say it's HIGHLY unlikely that both were defective.

As far as what I would have done differently, I want more information. Is your water completely cold, luke warm or hot like normal but just not for very long? If cold, did the water get unusually hot before it got cold?

With these questions you can fairly closey isolate the problem. In this case the questions may have elicited the information that the water got danged hot and someone turned the breaker off. Likely the high limit problem wouldn't have been detected but the t-stats would have been changed. FWIW, I always change the uper and lower t-stat together.

Glenn_3

Yeah

Scott we always replace both thermostats as well.

Thing is though, that the problem wasn't that the water was too hot it wasn't working at all. I had no reason to think that it was a thermostat problem cause the high limit wasn't tripped. HO had breaker turned off. Looking back I don't know that I would have done anything differently. Had to give statement to insurance company today. Ah well,

Steve_35

Why had the HO turned off the breaker?

There's a reason why they turned the breaker off? What do you think it might have been? I don't believe they turned it off because they had no hot water. My gut tells me it was turned off because the water was too hot. Do you know (did you see yourself) that there was no ceiling damage before you came on the scene?

You mentioned you had no draw through the upper element when you started. Did you ohm it by any chance?

There's a reason why the contacts welded and the breaker didn't trip. Either the breaker is bad and won't trip or the load wasn't sufficient for it to trip. I guess checking the breaker ought to be done to determine which is the case.

Assuming the breaker is good then I'd say there was high resistance (poor connection) near the contacts that caused the contacts to fail.

To me the main question is, why was the breaker turned off. I've never seen a HO turn of the breaker when they had no hot water. I have seen them do it when the water was too hot.

In case it isn't obvious I'm wondering if the contacts on the t-stat and high limit had failed before you came on the scene and someone was looking for a fall guy.