I bought a house a couple months ago and have been fighting water heater issues since day one. First it was the thermal overload. I figured that out and adjusted the thermostats. Then the breaker was tripping. Once we moved in and started using hot water more, the breaker started tripping less for whatever reason. Lately, it started tripping very frequently, and water stayed hot for way less time. So I decided it was time to truly investigate. I assumed it was a dead lower heating element.
I opened the breaker, closed the fill valve, and opened the drain. Once water stopped draining, I removed the wiring from the top element and removed it. Water came out.
WTF, this should be drained… I shoved it back in to plug the hole and investigated the drain. I got my oil pan out and straightened a wire hanger and shoved it in there, ready to catch whatever came out.
I was not prepared for this. So much goddamn scale. I don’t think this water heater has ever been flushed. I’m still hard at work, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been working for hours to get this shit out. There was scale and brine sludge up to the lower element, which had corroded it apart. That’s like a foot of this shit.
New elements are in and wired up (I found a pack of two elements and two thermostats for only like $35) and I’m continuously filling and draining while alternating between using the wire hanger and a small pipe cleaner to fuck the drain hole.
I’ve never looked forward to a hot shower more than I do right now.
Edit:
My wife cooked a delicious steak, potatoes, and asparagus dinner, paired with a nice Cabernet Sauvignon. I took 400mg ibuprofen for my back and then enjoyed an aged, cold Mad Elf Ale in a hot shower. The breaker has not tripped. I’ll call this a success. I didn’t fully flush all the crap out because I ran out of time, but I’ll plan on doing a monthly flush until the chunks stop coming, and then I’m thinking a semiannual PM to flush it unless somebody recommends otherwise? I’m gonna also buy a new magnesium anode rod and replace the existing one within the year because it doesn’t look like this one has ever been replaced. Magnesium because I’m on a water softener and I plan to have all of the hardness out of the heater soon enough, so hardness shouldn’t be an issue.
Hi. You seem knowledgeable so I hope you don’t mind if I ask a couple of questions.
I purchased a new electric water heater a little over 1 year ago. The temp by default was set bizarrely low to me…I think like 120-125F. The water was simply lukewarm to me and I read online that the temp it was set to was not high enough to kill certain pathogens, so I turned it up a bunch. I think initially I decided to go with 150F but then turned it down to 145F after a while. The heater also encourages you to turn down the temp to a crazy low level if you know you will be away for a while…I decided to never use such a feature because I am not interested in breeding pathogens.
Anyway, after only a little over one year, one of the heating elements failed in it. Luckily, the company agreed that this would be covered under warranty. A tech came out and replaced it for me and showed me how corroded the component looked.
I asked him why it failed so prematurely and he gave two reasons for me.
Yearly maintenance had not yet been performed which supposedly caused excessive sediment buildup. I didn’t like this answer because it’s not like I had been running it for 5 years when this happened. It was only 1.5 years old. I have never heard of a water heater failing for not following the exact one yearly maintenance schedule to the exact date. This sounded odd to me… especially since I’ve lived in apartment complexes who fail to do any maintenance on them for years and this doesn’t occur. Does this theory make sense?
The temp was set too high. When the tech arrived, he said 145F was way too hot which I thought was bizarre to me. He set the temp to 140F and said it should prob be ok now. I don’t get how a difference in only 5 degrees would cause such a catastrophy premature failure of the heating element. Are some modern water heaters just build like shit and not actually meant to be run at temps that destroy pathogens?
Do you think there’s anything else I can do to prevent component failure like that? I’m not sure if maybe I have hard water and if that might have contributed? If I do, how would I fix that? Thanks!