I think my water heater is on the fritz and need to know for sure before I spend the money to call the plumber. I moved back in July and since then haven’t been able to take a halfway decent shower because even if I only take a 5 mintue shower there isn’t enough water for Mrs. Head. I live in a house now so the water heater should be bigger than the condo was. I could take a good 10 minute showere there and have water left over, now it’s only a couple of minutes and then it’s cold. So is this in indication that my water heater is gone? is there some other test I can do, help me before I become a popcicle.
I have run across this problem before and it is still unresolved. you might try rasiing the temp setting on the heater as well as opening the valve on the bottom to clean out any gunk that collects on the bottom of the heater. (put a bucket under it before you open it)
If you have an electric water heater, it’s possible that one of your heating elements is burned out.
If you look at your water heater, there are going to be two access hatches on the side; one near the bottom and one about halfway up.
Turn off the circuit breaker. Open each of the hatches, and there are going to be some wires and behind the wires a big hexagonal thing that looks like a plug screwed into the side of the tank with two wires connected to it. That’s the end of a heating element; the elements stick into the water and heat it up. Disconnect the wires (remember where they were hooked up to). Check the resistance between the the two connections on the element using a multimeter. Resistance should be around 10-20 ohms, if I remember correctly. Infinite resistance (or a very high value) means that the element is burnt out. If so, unscrew the element from the water heater, take it into your local reliable hardware store, and get another, etc.
The water heater has two elements, one behind each access panel.
Good luck…
Pointing out the (hopefully) obvious…
Er, drain the tank first…
This may be a dumb question, but have you tried bumping up the thermostat? The old owners might have set the heater at a lower temp to keep from scalding their kids.
If the element(s) are gone, you will probably want to also replace the anode. Unscrew the big boltlike thing on the top that doesn’t have any fittings going to it. Pull it out, and there will probably be a corroded-looking rod attached; that’s the anode.
FWIW, here’s a cutaway drawing of a water heater.
Oh yeah, there’s not necessarily any reason that the condo heater should be bigger. You might have just had a big heater at the condo.
Another problem might be a broken dip tube. This is a tube inside the tank where the cold water enters. It goes down toward the bottom of the tank and ensures that the incoming cold water does not mix too much with the hot water. There has been recent stories about a major manufacturer whos dip tubes fell apart because of poor materials. If this happens the incoming cold water can flow across and mix with the outgoing hot water. This makes it appear as if the hot water has been used up.
It could also be a defective thermostat. My electric heater has two, one for each element. Only one element is energized at a time.
As Rocketeer says one of the elements may be shot. Of course if it’s a gas heater…
As a working property manager, electric water heater problems are something I have to deal with all too often. I used to try and find the problem and hopefully fix it. I’ve found that it is cheaper for me to replace the unit for several reasons. We can buy them locally for around 150.00, after you have replaced all the parts in your old heater, you’ve spent around 75.00. Newer water heaters are more energy efficient, often your utility will offer a rebate if you replace your current model with a more efficient one, give them a call. Also, replacing a water heater is relatively simple requiring no special tools and a bit of common sense.
Sometimes electric water heaters will get jammed up for some reason. Normally, they automatically switch between the top and bottom thermostats. There’s a red reset button behind the top access panel. If you press that button, and the problem goes away after you give the tank time to heat up, you’ve saved some money. If that doesn’t fix it, you haven’t spent anything trying.
This is one of those posts where the OP doesn’t come back soon to answer further questions. If they do someday, we just have to retype things. But it was worth a shot.
I still don’t know what to do. As for their being kids I don’t know, but it does steam so the water is hot enough, it just doesn’t last very long. I have insurance on the place so if the heater is gone I only pay $50, however, if I call the plumber I still pay the 50 even if nothing is wrong with it. I’ve had lots of problems with the plumbing in the house so this isn’t anything new.
There’s definately a problem if you can’t get ten minutes of hot water.
I know I’d spend the fifty bucks, but then I like my shower. There’s nothing I hate worse than for the water to suddenly go cold in the middle of my shower.:eek: That and I like to stay out of hot water with the Mrs.
Edward, I’m going to reemphasize what GaryM said about the broken dip tube. There was a class action suit which was settled recently regarding defective dip tubes. I don’t have the details, but you could try asking here. I’m sure it’s been covered there if you want to look through the archives, but it’d be easier to just ask again.
Edward,
You still haven’t answered if your water heater is gas or electric.
This is an essential piece of information in order to give you advice.
Fifty bucks? Swap the heater. You won’t have to mess with it again for years.
oops, it’s an eletric heater. and I’d have the guy come out and swap it, but I don’t know that he will. plus if I can fix it free then that’s even better. They may not want to replace it. I know I get good hot water for the sink as it gets hot enough to scald so I know it’s doing something.
heres how I used to take a shower, just to gross you guys out…
I used to turn the hot water on about half way and the cold on all the way, that gave me a good warm shower and when it started getting cold I could just turn up the hot water. That gave 15 minutes or so. Now I have to turn the hot water all the way up and the cold most of the way down just to get a luke warm shower and I have to jump in and out in 3-4 minutes at most or there’s no water left. I don’t know for sure how long it takes but I know my wife usually doesn’t have much left.
Edward, I did a search for “+hot +water +heater +diptube” on alta vista, and got several links on diptube failures, like this one, which has a nice diagram, and this one, which tells you how to check the serial number to see if yours is affected by the recall.
Every water heater I have seen has the manf phone number on it…give em a call.
I just purchased a new house (first one for me) so I’m new to the hot water heater deal.
I have a gas heater but the pilot light keeps going out. This isn’t constant, maybe happening once every two weeks or so but still a pain since I usually discover it upon getting cold water for my morning shower.
The pilot is easy enough to relight and has no problems doing so when I have at it.
So, what might be blowing the pilot out? I make sure all access panels are shut so stray breezes don’t have direct access to the burner. Can the burner’s lighting and shutting off cause this (i.e. when it goes FOOMP during ignition does it blow air around to knock out the pilot)?
Everytime this happens it gives me the willies. I know the unit detects if the pilot light is out and automatically stops the gas flow but I’ve seen the results of gas explosions and it ain’t pretty (the house was GONE as were most of the two houses next to it).
FTR: The heating unit is only 4 years old.
Common cause, could also be the pilot needs to be re-adjusted, the thermo-couple repositioned and it could be a vent problem (air currents from the vent.
In any case, you should call your contractor and ask them to send the plumber that did the installation. Surely you are still under warantee.