Damn Water Heater Element!

Wouldn't you know it. SWMBO's yelling at me that there's not enough hot water for her bath, so I find that an element's blown, and it's the bottom one. Now I will have to spend some of my weekend draining the whole damn tank.


F#@ker!



.

Don't complain, Tuesday morning I had to help my dad snake out the the plumbing after our septic tank backed up and we had sewage in our basement.

That does suck!

AHAHA!!! we have a boiler

Thats new.

Well, to look on the bright-side of things, at least it's only the element and not the whole unit.

Exactly, could have been the whole unit.

I had that happen a few years ago. The night before we were getting ready to leave on vacation, I was in the basement and heard what sounded like water spraying. Turns out the bottom of the water heater had rusted through and it had sprung a leak. Luckily Home Depot was still open so I ran there and bought a new water heater and stayed up into the wee hours of the morning putting that in. Normally I would have just shut the water off and dealt with it when we got back, but we had someone coming to cat sit and we needed to take showers before we left the next morning so it had to be fixed.

We can't do that here in Phx without a permit. The whole job has to be inspected unless it's done by a master plumber.

that isn't so bad really.......takes longer to drain than anything else

wild said:

We can't do that here in Phx without a permit. The whole job has to be inspected unless it's done by a master plumber.

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oh eff-that.....but then again I do things without permits all the time....can we say FIRE PIT!!!!!

I have, on one occasion, replaced the bottom element without draining. I opened the breaker, shut off the inlet to the heat, then opened a hot water valve to de-pressurize the tank (then closed it). Then it's just a matter of swapping the elements quickly. I used a heat gun to dry out the electrode area before reconnecting the power leads.

This only works if the floor drain is close by and the floor can handle flooding.

Much easier than swapping a burner on a Navy M-tube boiler while the ship is underway.

Just get in the habit of draining the tank at least once a year and flushing it out. This will wash away the sediment that builds up on the bottom of the tank, which is what causes the tanks to rust out faster, and gives you a chance to inspect the elements while you are there. In my mind, those elements are something to replace every few years, even if they don't LOOK like they need it. They are not that expensive, and it saves hassle later. I do this, just like changing out the filters on the furnace, on a regular basis, and I have never had the wife screaming from a cold shower.

Which reminds me that I need to check the resistance on ours....

Oh, it wasn't that bad, I just didn't feel like doing it.

david_42 said:

I have, on one occasion, replaced the bottom element without draining. I opened the breaker, shut off the inlet to the heat, then opened a hot water valve to de-pressurize the tank (then closed it). Then it's just a matter of swapping the elements quickly. I used a heat gun to dry out the electrode area before reconnecting the power leads.

This only works if the floor drain is close by and the floor can handle flooding.

Much easier than swapping a burner on a Navy M-tube boiler while the ship is underway.

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I've done this before too, but the replacement element I had didn't have a gasket, so I would have ended up with about 30 gal of water on the floor of the garage while I changed it over from the old element.

Don't hurt to replace the anode each year also. Doing that will extend the life of your heater by years.

In MA (even out in the stix where the_bird lives) you can't do almost *ANY* plumbing whithout being a licensed plumber - even "simple" things like adding an icemaker, replacing, an outside hose bibb, etc.

That's not to say I haven't done things myself, including hot water heater replacement, before.

MA_Brewer said:

In MA (even out in the stix where the_bird lives) you can't do almost *ANY* plumbing whithout being a licensed plumber - even "simple" things like adding an icemaker, replacing, an outside hose bibb, etc.

That's not to say I haven't done things myself, including hot water heater replacement, before.

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That sucks. Here in OR, a homeowner can do anything themselves on their own home as long as they follow local code and permit processes.

course, in the city I work in the most, you have to have three seperate permits, and two trades to change out a H2O heater professionally! Hire a ****ing electrician to come out once to remove the wire nuts from the heater circuit connection, then again to reconnect them! F-ing unbelievable!

Sea said:

That sucks. Here in OR, a homeowner can do anything themselves on their own home as long as they follow local code and permit processes.

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Same thing here in Manitoba. I can do my own electrical work under a permit as a homeowner, but I can't go over to my buddy's house and do his. There are ways around that, of course, but a man's home is still his castle here.

For Electrical, you CAN do that in MA - pull a permit, get it inspected, etc. Just NOT plumbing.