Water Heater Upper Thermostat

Electric water heaters have one or two elements and each is controlled by a thermostat.
Water heater upper thermostat. Testing the thermostats on a dual element water heater. When it goes bad you don t have any hot water at all. And once the water has. This rheem marathon upper element thermostat is specifically designed to be used as the upper thermostat in a rheem marathon residential electric water heater.
Electric water heaters have a lower and upper thermostat one for each heating element. When the water has cooled off the thermostats kick on the heating elements to heat the water. 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. A dual element water heater uses two heating elements controlled by two separate thermostats.
It s not necessary that both thermostats will do the same work their work can vary according to the water heater unit. Many modern homes come with dual element water heaters. 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. 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.
You can pick up a good inexpensive multimeter online or any local hardware store. To test you will need a multimeter and screwdriver. Since most electric water heaters use both an upper and lower element the process outline below is for them. An upper and a lower located under two control panels.
These water heaters often have a non simultaneous design which means that only 1 heating element is on at any given time. Rheem uv11699 therm o disc upper thermostat electric water heaters 3 9 out of 5 stars 7. Adjusting an electric hot water heater temperature thermostat setting is a little more involved but still relatively easy. Testing the upper thermostat.
Testing water heater thermostats is important in locating water heater problems. Reliance 9000507 045 lower electric thermostat black 4 7 out of 5 stars 252. The upper element heats the upper portion of. Adjusting an electric hot water heater temperature thermostat setting.
The upper thermostat is the primary one that contains the high limit switch and the lower thermostat is used to detect the change in the temperature of the water. How a bad thermostat causes your water heater reset button to trip. If the hot water heater is not working one of the thermostats may be bad. The majority of electric water heaters have two thermostats.
This type of thermostat is for use in 2 element water heaters. This article deals with thermostats on electric water heaters.