Hot water heater is one of the most essential home appliances. It is often used for daily activities. Therefore, it is so important to give the regular and proper maintenance for this unit. If your unit cannot heat the water optimally, then there are some factors that must be analyzed carefully. One of important part of the unit (especially for electric water heating units) that must be checked is water heating elements. Without the proper performance of heating elements, the unit will not be able to heat the water powerfully!
There are usually available two electric water heater heating elements! One is located at the top and other is located at the bottom! And there are several factors that can lead to the fail of the function of those heating elements, but mostly caused by old age, bad effect from power surges, and a lot of mineral build-up. Those factors even can cause burn out for both elements. In several cases, poor performance of the bottom element can cause the production of hot water in short supply! And a bad performance of the top element will make the unit be not able to produce hot water a lot!
But it is better to check both elements if you feel your unit cannot work properly. Below are pieces of information that you can use to check and analyze the performance of the heating elements of your electric hot water heater:
1. First, make sure the power supply of the unit is completely turned off!
2. Take a look at the electrical access panels, try to locate them with one neared the top and other nearer the tank’s base.
3. It is better to check the top heating element first! There must be available several panel’s screws! Use screwdriver to remove those screws! Find and uncover the top element by removing the insulation and panel carefully. Then there are usually two electrical screwed-wires into the terminals of the element. These wires are not needed to test and check the element, therefore you can disconnect them.
4. Now, you can start testing by using multi-meter that can be used to measure Ohms, or you can also use Ohm-meter. First, make sure to set the scale of your multi-meter at RX1! (Note: don’t miss also to take a look at the power to the water tank, make sure it is off).
5. Next, start to touch the red & black probes for each terminal! Then analyze the result that is displayed by your multi-meter! If you see the needle at 7.5 Ohm (?) or higher or moves all the way to the right, then your top heating element should not be replaced. On other hand if the needle at 1 or OL or infinity then the element should be replaced.
6. Do the same procedures to check the bottom heating element!
Image source: Amazon.Com
Other posts: Popular options to heat swimming pool!
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.