Ok so I have a water heater that quit on my yesterday. We had been away from the house all day (so the tank should've been full of hot water) and around 8:00pm my wife took a 15 minute shower, afterwards I was giving my 3 year old a bath when the water got ice cold. I was thinking maybe my wife just used it all up but after an hour or so I still have no hot water for my shower. I flip the breaker switch off for an hour and flip it back on before I went to bed to give it all night to heat. Wake up this morning and nadda. So I call my maintenance guy over and he looks at my breaker and asks what my range is doing cut off. I tell him we tend to flip the breaker switch of anything we're not using. We do the same with w&d, dishwasher, garbage disposal.... I've heard some things use electricity even when they are not running so I cut off whatever I'm not using. He tells me he thinks maybe they wired the hot water heater to the range breaker switch. He flips it on and tells me to wait an hour to try agian.... I've lived here for 4+ years and have been living this way since and haven't ran into this problem before lol. In fact, the last month or so I have noticed some SCOLDING HOT water. Felt like you were boiling eggs and reached in to pick one up. The water heater is wedged against the wall with my W&D beside it so there's no way I can reach any kind of switches/reset buttons to do it myself.
I have never heard of anyone regularly flipping their breaker switches to save electricity. I am not an electrician, but I do not believe they were designed to be on/off switches, especially over the long haul. Not saying that is the case here, but I can't imagine you are saving much in terms of electrical use compared to the potential for trouble.
Turning off your breaker daily is very detrimental to your household electrical system. Most household breakers are not certified for daily on/off use. The ones that are certified are commercial use only, which I'm assuming you don't have. You can ruin your entire system doing what you're doing. Just thought you should know.
i have never heard of anyone using their breaker as an on off switch. i would bet that has something to do with any issues you are having.
Lol at switching off/on breakers. Is the elec box at least easily accessible? Somewhere on some maintenance message board your maintenance guy is posting about weird pain in the ass tenants.
Wow, I wonder in this case, if the some thing happens due to an electrical issue who'd be at fault. I'm sure it takes one bad experience before it's in every rental contract. http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarchive/NEC-HTML/HTML/ElectricalCircuitBreakers~20020419.htm Circuit Breakers As Switches Both the ANSI and the NEC definitions acknowledge the potential for the legitimate use of circuit breakers as switches. Switches (pass, but do not consume electrical power) are considered as being control devices, thus one may also say that a breaker is a control device, or a controller. To aid in the understanding of a fine point, I offer this comparative example. A gas valve and a steam pressure relief valve are both controllers, one the fuel to the burners that aids in the development steam pressure, and the pressure relief valve that opens on excessive pressure. Both are controllers, one operating (the gas valve) the other safety (the relief valve). Likewise in a parallel manner; we say that a circuit breaker can control and protect an electrical circuit. An electrical relay is an example of an operating control; it opens and closes the circuit. Circuit breakers are not designed as replacements for relays, operating controls. There is as you may intuitively have anticipated an exception. Some circuit breakers are manufactured for use in a specific type of application. When a circuit breaker is designed to also be routinely used as an on-off switch to control 277 volt florescent luminaires they are marked SWD, for switch duty. This does not mean that a switch duty breaker can be used to manually control a traffic signal light where it will be cycled 1,000 or more times per day. The point is; the listing for switch duty (SWD) does not mean a circuit breaker can be used as a high frequency cycling operating control, such as a relay that has a life span rated in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of duty cycles. While circuit breakers can be legitimately and safely used as switches, the frequency and duration of such use is very limited. Routinely circuit breakers are manually operated for service-maintenance, and repair type activities. With the preceding enhancing our understanding; we can say that circuit breakers can legitimately be used as switches, generally they are not intended for prolonged frequent or repetitive manual breaking and making type control of electrical energy utilization equipment.
Is it one of the older style water heaters? Older heaters like the one in my apartment have a tiny eternal flame under the tank, which is required for the heater to work. Perhaps yours is the same and the problem is therefore not with the breaker. Ours went off one day this last winter and I didn't figure out that this was needed for 2 days. Seemed odd to me to have an open flame in the house at all times, but that's just how they are designed.
In case you need a new one..... This one from Lowe's has good reviews. You can go here to register to have a 10% off coupon code emailed to you, it can take up to 3 days to get it. If you have a Chase Freedom card, right now you get 5% back on Lowe's purchases. If you go through Chase Ultimate Rewards, you get another 5% back. If you don't have a Chase Freedom card, I believe you can get 5% back from Discover by going through there, but they don't offer the extra 5% like Chase does right now. After tax, I'm guessing this will be about $445 with the Chase Freedom card.
ok found the problem.... apparently its been this way for 4+ years but the thermostat was set waaaaaaay too high. I could've been BBQed. It was set so high it tripped the circuit the heater was on. All fixed now.
