Taadz wrote:

List,

I have a electric ho****er heater that was in the house when I purchased it
in 1998. My neighbor thinks the previous owner installed it in 1989. The
unit
looks and operates fine, except for last weekend. Saturday morning I went to
take a shower and found there wasn't any hot water. I went down and found
the reset button on the upper element needed reset. At this time the
temperature
for the water was at 120.

Since I have never taken the panels off before I assumed this was the
original setting.
I state this because later that night when I went to take a shower the water
was scalding
hot. I had never seen the water coming out of my faucet that hot ever. I
went down and
lowered the temp to 110. The next morning was fine, I went to take a shower
Sunday
night and found no hot water again. I reset the element again and it has
been working
fine ever since.

Because it's been working fine I don't know if my first assessment of
replace the
elements is the only thing I should do? Any insight or direction would be
great.

Thanks..

Tom.

A bad element (element winding faulted to the sheath internally)
can cause overheating and tripping of the safety. This happens
because the element will draw current from one side of the line
even though the thermostat is in the open position.

To find out for sure, you would have to use an Ohmmeter to measure
resistance from the element terminals (wires disconnected) to ground.
Of course, you would turn all power off to the heater first.

If the elements test OK, a sticking thermostat could be to blame.

Jim