Water Heater Troubleshooting

Steven@147

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Nothing is guaranteed to get you in and out of the shower faster than cold water, or so the Wife informed me!
Our water heater is a Suburban 10 gal tank, AC/Propane 5 years old. We run a water softener and I keep the tank cleaned out of sediment and change out the anode rod when needed (about every year). We mostly run it on AC so when Tami told me we had no hot water, I walked over to the control panel and flipped it to propane. Came on worked fine for me! Tami was not impressed!

Well once i had my hot shower I started troubleshooting. Nice resistance through heating element so it looks good, but no AC power to it. Backtracking power found little AC switch power in but no power out. OK bad switch. Took the switch out and replaced it with a fuse temporarily, ok, now power to the heating element, water heater working. Downloaded parts break down page from Suburban website. Got online and found the little AC switch for a couple bucks. Also found a replacement heater element $15-20. Both available through Amazon. Ordered two replacement AC switches, one fix one spare, and ordered a new element just to have on hand. All for $30 delivered free and in two days.

Back in business, another day in the RV life, the Wife, happy again!

Now back to our regular schedule program of window latch repair, cleaning out the tracks and treating the gaskets. I'll post up our latch repair and the gross things we found in the gaskets.
 

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Nothing is guaranteed to get you in and out of the shower faster than cold water, or so the Wife informed me!
Our water heater is a Suburban 10 gal tank, AC/Propane 5 years old. We run a water softener and I keep the tank cleaned out of sediment and change out the anode rod when needed (about every year). We mostly run it on AC so when Tami told me we had no hot water, I walked over to the control panel and flipped it to propane. Came on worked fine for me! Tami was not impressed!

Well once i had my hot shower I started troubleshooting. Nice resistance through heating element so it looks good, but no AC power to it. Backtracking power found little AC switch power in but no power out. OK bad switch. Took the switch out and replaced it with a fuse temporarily, ok, now power to the heating element, water heater working. Downloaded parts break down page from Suburban website. Got online and found the little AC switch for a couple bucks. Also found a replacement heater element $15-20. Both available through Amazon. Ordered two replacement AC switches, one fix one spare, and ordered a new element just to have on hand. All for $30 delivered free and in two days.

Back in business, another day in the RV life, the Wife, happy again!

Just a tip for ya, in case something like that happens again......you really didn't need to put a "fuse" in there to have a temporary fix for the water heater. I simpler/quicker fix would have been to just remove the switch, twist the two wires together and let it work.....in other words, just jump out the switch temporarily. There is still protection in the circuit, the 120VAC breaker in the breaker panel that feeds the water heater, as well as a reset on the water heater that is pictured above the gas valve area and has reset written on it
 
Just a tip for ya, in case something like that happens again......you really didn't need to put a "fuse" in there to have a temporary fix for the water heater. I simpler/quicker fix would have been to just remove the switch, twist the two wires together and let it work.....in other words, just jump out the switch temporarily. There is still protection in the circuit, the 120VAC breaker in the breaker panel that feeds the water heater, as well as a reset on the water heater that is pictured above the gas valve area and has reset written on it

yeah I saw that, and had looked at the reset buttons but they looked fine. The wires for the switch had insulated female terminals attached so I used the fuse to connect the terminals together. I'll admit I used an ATO 12VDC 20 amp blade fuse and just slipped the female switch terminals on the fuse blades.. At least I didn't use a paperclip! LOL's I know, I know.
 
Or I could have just let it run on propane until I got the switch. Were paying our electric bill at 0.17 kwhr or propane is $3.19 a gallon.
 
yeah I saw that, and had looked at the reset buttons but they looked fine. The wires for the switch had insulated female terminals attached so I used the fuse to connect the terminals together. I'll admit I used an ATO 12VDC 20 amp blade fuse and just slipped the female switch terminals on the fuse blades.. At least I didn't use a paperclip! LOL's I know, I know.

Well, in your case, with the insulated female 1/4" for spade connectors, and you already having something handy....it was probably smarter/quicker to do what you did. I just wanted to point out that a fuse was not a necessity.....but it certainly didn't hurt anything either.....unless it would have been a smaller fuse like maybe a 5A or something that would have blown. Good job Steve and thanks for posting it.
 
FWIW, the last time I replaced the heating element for our water heater, I got it from Menards and it was under $10. Almost any hardware store will carry a 1500W heating element. I'm cheap. :)
 
My rube goldberg water heater temp fix reminds me of a real funny story? What's the old saying, necessity is the mother of invention?
Back in the day of early computers, back before online transactions even, all data was input using boxes of IBM key punch cards. Remember those? The banks had several key punch machine operators and their sole job was typing key punch cards all day long.

Anyway the key punch hole data cards were read into the "system" by a card reader. The card reader had a suction motor on the picker sector that grabbed the card using suction and fed the card into the feed rollers. Another motor fed blowing air into the stack of key punch cards to fan and separate the cards so they wouldn't stick together.

I was working on a system and the blower motor went out on the card reader and I didn't have a replacement. The cards were sticking together and would jam up in the card reader. It would take a couple days to get a new blower motor. So I used and old vacuum cleaner, attached the hose to the output and plumbed the vacuum cleaner hose into the blower section of the card reader. It worked! I told the operator to remember to turn on the vacuum cleaner when she was reading cards into the system. She thought I was crazy! The vacuum cleaner trick worked equally well on the suction side of the card reader. God these old computer systems used to run boxes and boxes of IBM key punch cards through them.

This was back in the day when banks had to update their records every night using IBM key punch cards and print out trial balance books for bank employees to look up a customer's bank balance and canceled checks took about 5-7 days to clear.

I started working on these old computer systems in 1979. They took up an entire room for the main 8 bit processor, 8.25 inch floppy disc readers, countless huge hard disc drives, reel to reel mag tape readers, printed check sorters, and the system line or page printers. The printers ran boxes and boxes of 132 column greenbar paper through them. These old systems put out enough heat to require special false floors with AC blowing all the time. Gosh the hard disc drives were huge, each removable disc pack was 20 platers deep, each platter was about the size of a large dinner plate, and they were only 200 megabyte.

Now i have more computer power in my wrist watch or four times that in my Iphone than an entire room full of old computers.
 
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My rube goldberg water heater temp fix reminds me of a real funny story? What's the old saying, necessity is the mother of invention?
Back in the day of early computers, back before online transactions even, all data was input using boxes of IBM key punch cards. Remember those? The banks had several key punch machine operators and their sole job was typing key punch cards all day long.

Anyway the key punch hole data cards were read into the "system" by a card reader. The card reader had a suction motor on the picker sector that grabbed the card using suction and fed the card into the feed rollers. Another motor fed blowing air into the stack of key punch cards to fan and separate the cards so they wouldn't stick together.

I was working on a system and the blower motor went out on the card reader and I didn't have a replacement. The cards were sticking together and would jam up in the card reader. It would take a couple days to get a new blower motor. So I used and old vacuum cleaner, attached the hose to the output and plumbed the vacuum cleaner hose into the blower section of the card reader. It worked! I told the operator to remember to turn on the vacuum cleaner when she was reading cards into the system. She thought I was crazy! The vacuum cleaner trick worked equally well on the suction side of the card reader. God these old computer systems used to run boxes and boxes of IBM key punch cards through them.

This was back in the day when banks had to update their records every night using IBM key punch cards and print out trial balance books for bank employees to look up a customer's bank balance and canceled checks took about 5-7 days to clear.

I started working on these old computer systems in 1979. They took up an entire room for the main 8 bit processor, 8.25 inch floppy disc readers, countless huge hard disc drives, reel to reel mag tape readers, printed check sorters, and the system line or page printers. The printers ran boxes and boxes of 132 column greenbar paper through them. These old systems put out enough heat to require special false floors with AC blowing all the time. Gosh the hard disc drives were huge, each removable disc pack was 20 platers deep, each platter was about the size of a large dinner plate, and they were only 200 megabyte.

Now i have more computer power in my wrist watch or four times that in my Iphone than an entire room full of old computers.

LOL.....me and you are a couple of "old guys" for sure. I remember my first real job and it was in a Steel Mill. I hired on as a laborer and about once a month we would get a job of going up to the office area/data center and unloading boxes and boxes of the punch cards off of pallets and stacked onto a freight elevator to take them to the data center for storage.....I was 19 years old and it was 1973. I remember thinking....what in the world do they do with all these cards.....literally 10s of thousands of them, and then next month more would show up....LOL
 
Nothing is guaranteed to get you in and out of the shower faster than cold water, or so the Wife informed me!
Our water heater is a Suburban 10 gal tank, AC/Propane 5 years old. We run a water softener and I keep the tank cleaned out of sediment and change out the anode rod when needed (about every year). We mostly run it on AC so when Tami told me we had no hot water, I walked over to the control panel and flipped it to propane. Came on worked fine for me! Tami was not impressed!

Well once i had my hot shower I started troubleshooting. Nice resistance through heating element so it looks good, but no AC power to it. Backtracking power found little AC switch power in but no power out. OK bad switch. Took the switch out and replaced it with a fuse temporarily, ok, now power to the heating element, water heater working. Downloaded parts break down page from Suburban website. Got online and found the little AC switch for a couple bucks. Also found a replacement heater element $15-20. Both available through Amazon. Ordered two replacement AC switches, one fix one spare, and ordered a new element just to have on hand. All for $30 delivered free and in two days.

Back in business, another day in the RV life, the Wife, happy again!

Now back to our regular schedule program of window latch repair, cleaning out the tracks and treating the gaskets. I'll post up our latch repair and the gross things we found in the gaskets.

I had similar problem this past weekend, 1st night water heater worked on electric, 2nd night did not. Next morning started troubleshooting. Checked reset switch and fuse, resistance on element, all good. Noticed no power to element, went inside pushed plug on control board and could feel it slide in. That was it, the plug had worked itself out. Easy fix, got lucky, only spent 1.5 hours troubleshooting! Lol
 
Is there a fuse for the hot water heater ? I have none labeled in box well not labeled hot water heater.
 
Is there a fuse for the hot water heater ? I have none labeled in box well not labeled hot water heater.

There is Circuit breaker for AC side in electrical panel and 1 each high temp reset switch for propane and 120 volt.
 
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