On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:30:52 GMT, Grandpa wrote:
mm wrote:
On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:45:03 GMT, Grandpa wrote:
mm wrote:
WE NEED PEOPLE HERE TO RESOLVE WHETHER ALL THE HOT WATER FAUCETS
SHOULD BE CLOSED, AS YOU SAY, OR WHETHER THE LOWEST ONE IN THE HOUSE
SHOULD BE WIDE OPEN, AS I SAY.
Did you open the hot or cold valve? If it was the lowest cold valve,
Until you asked 
, I was sure it was the hot water.
I can understand that - check to make sure the water is off and
relieve the residual pipe pressure from the tank.
And start to create a partial vacuum above the water in the water
heater.
I believe you except that I'm trying to figure out why opening the
cold water wouldn't do the same thing. The path from the cold faucet
to the wh is only a bit longer than from the hot faucet. The fact
that hot would let water and then air in at the top and cold would let
water and then air in at the bottom seems an unimportant difference to
me.
http://www.maytagwaterheaters.com/ideas/mainttips.html
Look at item 3 under "How To Flush & Drain Your Water Heater"
Now stop yelling.
I wasn't yelling. In fact I'm glad to have this come up now, since I
may need a new element in my wh. I have to measure things and find
out. The 5500 watt element burned out, so I move the wire to the 3500
watt element. I was sure that would be fine, but now it seems to take
2 or 3 days for the water to heat after a bath, instead of what I had
thought was less than 6 hours. Do you think maybe it was 23 hours, if
I took a bath at the same time every day, and now it is 40 hours, and
all I have to do is turn the thermostat up, which I turned down when I
went from the broken to the good heater (I had turned it up all the
way when I didnt' ssupspect the element was bad, so I had to turn it
down..)
Leaving the lowest cold valve open will usually work because the
cold water inlet is actually down at the bottom of the tank via the
dip tube. There is a really small hole in the side of the tube at
the top for relief purposes, but its probably too great a
restriction. However, after you've relieved the tank pressure, it
makes sense to me to close off all the valves to keep that vacuum
working for you.
Maybe, but the guy at the plumbing supply house said to leave it open
until I was done, and barely any water came out, so I'm sticking with
that. I'll use the cold water faucet. Thanks for correcting me.
BTW, typing in all capitals is usually considered yelling in the
usenet community.
Yes, I know, and I *was* yelling, to try to make sure readers heard
me. Oh, I get it. I"m sorry. That's why you said I could stop
yelling. Yeah, I was planning to, now that two people had replied on
that issue.
Seems to me that having all the elements working
in your heater would be more efficient that trying to heat with only
part of them working.
They were never all working. The default design on this heater is
that only the top and bottom 5500 watt elements work, and if someone
has a special need he can connect the bottom 3800 element in parallel.
The water heater comes with a heavy jumper to do this and there is a
place on the metal label to mark that one has connected both.
Common fallacy is thinking that the higher a
temperature is set to will make it heat faster. The fact is that
That's not whaat I meant either. I meant that if the water is hotter,
then pure hot water will be hotter than what I have been getting,
which is not hot enough. It's also true that if the water is hotter
and one needs to use cold water to get a desired temperature, he uses
up less hot water, less cold water enters the water heater, and it
takes less time to get the whole tank hot again.
there is a fixed rate at which heat can be transferred from the
element to the water (look up the definition of BTU), and the
thermostat only turns the element on or off. The more watts, the
more heat transferred per unit of time. Expecting a lower wattage
element to get the water in the tank to the same temperature in the
same amount of time is a false economic mindset. So I'd check out
Good advice in general, but that's not the situation here.
I don't expect it in the same time, but it seems the time has gone
from 6 hours to more than 36 hours even though the wattage only went
from 5500 to 3800. (Not counting the upper element which has stayed
the same but only runs for 20 minutes, and only when the water at the
top has gotten sufficiently cold.)
I just don't want to have to wait 2 days until I can take the next
bath. I wasn't keeping close track, but I have a feeling it once took
three days.
But maybe it had been 20 hours for years and now it is 30 hours. I'll
try to check, but will probably get impatient and just raise the water
temp. It's definitely set too low now because even pure hot water is
barely hot enough.
the elements and replace them if needed as you plan.