Thread: What might be causing me to have no hot water after service upgrade?

Just did a service upgrade on my house from 60 amps to 200 amps. Now my water isn't getting as hot as it was before. The water will get warm but not hot enough for a shower or anything like that. I got to check my hot water heater to make sure it still has power (may have a misplaced or loose wire after the service upgrade) but i think it still has power since the water does get warm. Any ideas on what might be the problem?

it sounds like one of the elements are bad. or if you put a new hot water heater in, check to see where you have the water temp set.if you are getting power to the heater and you must be, or you wouldnt even have warm water. i hope this helps.

check the tempeture on the water heater, make sure that cover your needs.
good luck

Go to the breaker box and find the breaker for the water heater, A double pole single throw 30 amp. breaker. Turn off the breaker and check to see if both wires coming out of the breaker are tight if not tighten and turn back on. Next go to water heater and there are two cover panels one at the top and one at the bottom. Remove the covers and you will see your thermostats. On them is a red reset button, push them to reset. Also check the temperature setting on the thermostat's they should be set to about 130 degrees, not any higher or you can receive 3rd degree burns. If all this checks out ok then you either have one of your thermostat's bad or one of your heater elements bad. They need to be check or replaced

Since the problem with the hot water heater came just after the service upgrade, it seems likely that it is indeed the cause. You didn't mention that the service upgrade included a new main electrical panel, but I assume that it did. If so, my first thought is that the person who re-wired the circuits into the new panel wrongly assumed that the water heater feed circuit was 120 VAC instead of 208 or 240 VAC (which most larger water heaters require) and mis-wired the circuit. It's common to use a 'Romex' cable for hot water heaters that only has black and white wires (and the bare ground, of course), and typical 120 VAC circuits use black as hot and white as neutral. Therefore, if that mis-wiring is the mistake, you would get 1/4 the power to the hot water heater and the water would never get up to the proper temperature. Look inside the electrical panel and note whether or not the hot water heater is wired with the black wire to a single pole circuit breaker and the white to the neutral bus. If so, the fix is to connect the black and white wires from the hot water heater circuit to a double pole circuit breaker so it gets the full voltage (check the nameplate voltage on the water heater before doing this, of course). When using 2 wire plus ground 'Romex' cable for a 208 or 240 volt circuit, it's a better practice to color the white wire with red electrical tape to indicate its use as hot rather than neutral.

Might be the one heat element burned out or going to be burned out due to one or both.

You had a black and white wire going to two thirty amp fuses at the top of your 60 amp panel giving you 220 volts to your water heater. When you changed to the 200 amp panel you probably put the black wire on a single pole breaker and the white wire on the ground bus. That gives you 120 volts to the water heater. To fix it you have to get a two pole 30 amp breaker and put the black wire under one screw and the white wire under the other screw (these are the wires coming from the heater). This will give you 220 volts to the water heater and you will have hot water again.