Your water heater wiring, while incorrect, has nothing to do with the main
disconnect problem. You are correct that a 4500 watt heater requires a 30
amp circuit and #10 wiring and that a 3500 watt unit would work fine with
the existing wiring and breaker



"tysteel" wrote in message
...
Thank you all for the responses, and it looks like I'll have to call a
professional on this one.

I guess a variety of things could be causing the problem. For one,
there is an electric water heater wired up here, and it's connected to
a 20 amp circuit breaker, along with the size of wiring that fits, yet
the water heater has a voltage of 4500-5500 watts....... seems like it
should be connected to a 30 amp circuit breaker with a thicker wiring
connection. I do suspect this could be one of the things causing the
problem and is causing overloading. The original water heater
certainly didn't take in that much power, and wasn't as large, but the
replacement seems excessive.


I contacted the landlord who owns the place, and I've told him about
this repeatedly, so I may just get it fixed myself, and take it out of
the rent.

I was thinking about purchasing another water heater as that would
probably be a little cheaper than having the wiring replaced as I live
in a rural area ..everything is charged at an arm and a leg when you
live in the country.... but was wondering what would work with the
wiring and breaker that's already there. The other day I was
checking out Lowe's and came across a water heater ($219...20 gallon))
that uses two heating elements rated at about 3500 watts.....from what
I understand, that should work with a 20 amp breaker and the size of
wiring there. If I'm wrong about that, I'm sure I'll stand
corrected.


I was thinking to try replacing that first as I know that's a definite
problem, and then see if this helps prevent any more overloads to the
main box outside. I think that when the space heater was used, it
was too much for the circuits to bear, and that's why things started
to black out. If it doesn't help, I'll call the electrician.