I'm just posting this out of curiousity. A woman I used to do work
for, for many years just called me to ask me for advice about her
water heater. She lives out of state now, so I can not actually see
the problem. She claims the electric water heater was smoking, and
said that after her husband turned off the breaker it continued to
"burn". Then her husband cut the electric cable to finally make out
the "fire". Although she said she did not actually see any fire, just
smoke.

I should mention that I worked as a plumber for 8 years before I
retired, not including the many years I was a handyman doing plumbing,
electrical and other repair work before that. Yet I never ran across
this type of problem. However, I worked in a city where almost
everyone had natural gas heaters. While I have worked on several
electric heaters, they were few compared to the gas ones.

Yet, I am in a fog on this matter. This woman said that she had
noticed for a few weeks that there was not enough hot water. On
Friday she went into the basement to do laundry, and noticed the
smoke, and got her husband.

Neither of them are handy, so I question this whole matter. However,
I know they are not going to lie about it. I should mention that that
water heater was just installed about 3 years ago. I know this for
fact because she had called me to find out the name of the person that
took over for me, and I know he replaced it. In fact I told her it
might still be under warranty.

Anyhow, knowing that there are only 4 electrical parts, (2 elements
and 2 thermostat controls) plus some wire, what the heck could really
burn? The element is in the water, and while I know they are the most
likely part to burn out, they can not smoke under water. This seems
to only leave the thermostat controls.......
Has anyone ever seen one of them go up in smoke?
Once I ran into a defective one, but I have never heard of them
burning....

Anyone have any opinion, or ever expreience this?
Somehow this just dont seem to make much sense to me....
Most people replace gas heaters with electric ones because of the
lesser fire hazzard, and now I hear this......

Mark