On Tue, 03 Jun 2014 17:54:52 -0500, Jim Joyce wrote:

On Tue, 3 Jun 2014 06:03:08 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

Unplug it? Maybe it's on a plug, but all the electric WH's I've
seen were wired in.

Each of these have a standard 240V plug, the same type as my clothes dryer,

Plainly, the installer envisioned running only one of them some times.

and they share a breaker in the electrical panel. I flipped the breaker off
and unplugged them when I was flushing out the mineral build-up.

But if you want to disable one, I would just do what you suggested,
turn off the water supply and electric. I've done that with nat gas
ones that were in parallel where the house didn't really need two.
One problem though is that you only have 5500W? That's small for a
50 gallon, the recovery time is going to be slow, and with only one,
you might run out at times, but you can try it and see.

Our last house was nearly the same size and had a single 50-gal heater, but
that heater had both a lower element and an upper element. I'm not sure of
their respective wattages.


When we moved in, we didn't have *hot* water, which eventually prompted me
to check the heaters. One's overtemp limit switch was tripped, so we had
been running on one heater with the second one providing unheated water.
When I reset the overtemp limit switch, the following month the electric
bill went from $78 to $142. I'm sure there were other things involved, but

Wow!!!!! I would have thought the difference would be very little.
Please post back with next month's bill, and how many days in each
billing month.

Maybe you have a dripping hot water faucet.


I'm hoping the biggest chunk of that jump was the second heater.

Anyway, thanks everyone. For now, I'll flip the cold water inlet valve off
and unplug one of the heaters. We'll see how things go, as far as
temperature and supply. I don't think I'll drain it for now, in case I
decide to rotate the heaters every X months.