"Joe" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 12:23:03 GMT, "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.

The reset button is there to interupt electric flow in case the tank
overheats for some reason

Since it is working ok sometimes I would tend to suspect either the
top or bottom thermostat is sticking on. From your description the
top is the likely culprit, but they are fairly cheap so I would go
ahead and replace both.

This problem could also be caused by a failing heating element. Also
consider that heaters typically last 10 to 15 years. At best yours is
on its last leg so you might want to just go ahead and replace the
whole thing instead of replacing parts.

Steve B.