Feed Back Please ,water Heater Thermostat

tzzzz216

I had a customer call me about their water heater running out of hot water,the heater is only 3 years old. when i got there i felt the water and it was hot , I checked the elements and thermostats upper and lower they were good on the meter , but when I turned the thermostats down to 90 degrees upper and lower only the lower thermostat shut off at 90 degrees then i tried to turn down the upper one at 90 degrees it wouldn't shut off, but then I turned the upper one up to 150 and it shut off and started hammering, with it shutting down at that temp. the water must have been getting that hot for it to shut down at that temp.Right ? , I changed out the thermostat and it shut down at 120 degrees and the water seems to be hotter , than when i first checked it. I guess my question is this do think the same thing that the upper thermostat was reaching 150 degrees for it to shut down at that setting. Thanks in advance.

mdshunk

The top thermostat has a contact that will close when it is satisfied and send power to the lower element's thermostat. If the top element's stat had the top element running all the time, the lower element will never run. It would be running on one element (the top one) all the time. I believe you fixed your problem when you changed out that "stuck" top thermostat.

tzzzz216

Thanks for the fast feed back on this mdshunk .

mdshunk

For future reference, or for anyone else who cares, here's a generic wiring diagram for 90% of the electric water heaters out there:

tzzzz216

Thanks again mdshunk !!