"albee" wrote in message
...
I'm not getting any power to my upper thermostat, but checked the
breaker and have 120 and each pole there. I checked the top of the
heater, where the wires come out of the wall and attach to the wires
going into the heater, and I get 2.5 volts coming out of the wall.
Any thoughts on where/what happened?! Do I have to dig through my
walls?! FWIW, I'm in Tampa, FL area, home of massive lightning, which
we had yesterday, but only noticed no hot water today, after two
people showered okay. Possibly they had enough hot water even if it
went out yesterday? But still, I have power out of the breaker...?
Thanks.

I am guessing you have a 240 volt water heater. You must be checking from
each side of the breaker to the ground or neutral to get 120 volts. Go
across the two wires at the breaker. YOu should have 240 , but may not be
showing any voltage, or some very odd low voltage. If so , one side of the
breaker is bad or tripped. The reason you show 120 volts on each side is
the voltage if feeding through the water heater and that is where it is
comming from.