Electric water heater repairs.

I am getting good at them, wife called me while I was at the kids hockey practice and said we have no hot water for her bath. Boom run to Fleet Farm and grab a heating element. Go back pick up my son head home, on the way into the house grab my trusty Fluke meter, Turned breaker off and did a quick resistance check, top element 12 ohms reading bottom element open. Turn the incoming water off, quick out with the old in with the new and back to hot water. Whole thing took like 10 min. This is not the first time having to repair this 13 year old Bradford White water heater. Figure I can get 10 more years out of it, I have replaced the magnesium sacrificial anode twice and drain the some of the unit every couple years. Last time I had it empty I looked inside and the inside coating looked new.

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Just gotta remember to turn the water on and fill the tank before powering up the new element. Made that dumb mistake once. burned the new one right out and went back to the store to spend another $10.99

I pulled the elements on a 9 year old heater a couple weeks ago. Top element didn’t look great. Bottom was toast. Calcium buildup in the bottom of the heater was higher than the lower element. Ive seen this same thing on heaters that are 5 years old. Pays to have a water softener and flysh the heaters out.

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And dont forget to flip the breaker if working on an eletric water heater.

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Mike was it the little Red breaker? LOL

No kidding. Pretty sure I opened and closed the door twice just to make sure I had seen that right.

Holy Crap, that’s hilarious. Is that someone’s house??? And if it is, is it still standing or is it a pile of ash? Obviously it has to pass an inspection at some point?

No way?

It was rental property so this was fine.

The service wire coming in from the top is AWESOME!

Mike if I opened that door, I would have shut it and ran away.

Was thinking the same. Ended up just shutting the power off to the entire home.

Here is one I had to look at a couple weeks back. Water heater froze solid.This is what you get when you leave your garage door ooen at 25 below. Then again another rental property. You can just see the water heater on the right.

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Mike W wrote:

No kidding. Pretty sure I opened and closed the door twice just to make sure I had seen that right.

Wow.

Was that some kind of sub panel? or have they stripped out all the breakers in the main panel?

Yikes.

Grouse