Electric Hot Water Heater Element Test

Electric water heater element test procedure.

Electric hot water heater element test.

Electric hot water heater problems. A damaged water heater element doesn t heat the water properly and you may end up with luke warm or cold water coming out of your tap. An electric hot water heater has two thermostats controlling two separate heating elements one in the upper half of the tank one in the lower half. Usually when the upper thermostat goes bad you will have no hot water at all while a bad lower thermostat makes itself known when there is only a small amount of hot water before the tap water goes cold.

This article describes how to test electric hot water heater heating elements what readings to expect if using an ohmmeter. When a water heater no longer produces hot water the upper element on a double element water heater. An electric water heater uses one or two heating elements to heat the water inside the tank. Take 1 of the wires off of a water heater element.

The lower heating element is the main power house behind the electric water heating system heating up the cold water that enters the hot water tank at the bottom of the heater. The upper heating element simply raises the already hot water temperature further by heating the top portion of water in the tank. If your electric hot water heater is slow to heat runs out of hot water faster than it used to or doesn t deliver any hot water at all there s a 90 percent chance that simply replacing one or both of the heating elements will solve the problem. Because of this you should keep a check on the water heater element quite often.

You can test them with the power off using an ohmmeter to measure resistance or with the power on using a voltmeter to measure voltage. If you want to test a thermostat on an electric water heater you will also need to check the heating element this is important especially as open and grounded heating elements result in inaccurate tests. Water heater element testing is a very simple process. Remove 1 wire it doesn t matter which one by finding its loose end and unraveling it from around the metal element.

Each of a hot water heater s elements has 2 electrical wires running to screws that hold the element in place. The most obvious one is if the water heater element is damaged. To look for faults you will need to use a screwdriver. Electric water heaters have one or two elements and each is controlled by a thermostat.