As per title. Could just be our electric water heater has reached the end of its life and we need a new one. Could also be I’m a moron - and I’m certainly ignorant about home repairs. Or why not both?
It came with the apartment, and we’ve lived here about 15 years. There’s a green and a red light, neither of which are currently lit. I’ve never noticed when they’re normally lit. Temperature gauge is reading low, at around 20 degrees. You’d think I’d be able to say what it normally is, but nope!
At the bottom there’s something that looks like a fuse box. The switch at the top says On (ah, a clue!), at the bottom says Off, and it also has, going down, 30A, 30MA. It’s at Off.
That switch: I flip it up, there’s a clunking sound and sometimes an electric flash slightly behind it. The switch does not stay in the On position and immediately clunks back to Off. The red light flashes on for a half-second, then off. Nothing changes with the water heater’s (non-) activity. Beside it there’s a little button. I see nothing else for the interface.
Is there some magic step I’m missing for how I could fix this on a cold wet March night? Any ideas if this is something a servicing and part replacement should be able to fix, or if a whole new heater is necessary?
Thanks in advance!
EDIT: A plumber has been called, pictures of the device have been sent. Something is wrong with the 加熱器, it supposedly takes an hour or more to sort out, and the machine has to be drained. No shower tonight!
Once or twice in the past week, while washing dishes, I’ve wondered if there was less hot water than usual. I haven’t noticed anything when showering. The total lack of hot water is new tonight.
EDIT: Plenty of dish-washing tonight, and it presumably stopped working at some point during the evening, but I don’t know if it was exactly when the water was running or not. Although I suppose it could have broken earlier - I don’t think I’d used much hot water today until making dinner.
I wonder if it’s scaled up and needs cleaning or something? Sounds like a your-wife-calling-your-landlord-or-an-electrician-type problem. Happy cold showering in the meantime.
Just how much scaling actually happens? The possibly-smaller hot water supply earlier in the week had me thinking of silted-up reservoirs, but I’d dismissed that analogy as being totally inapplicable.
I’ve long wondered how much power we’re unnecessarily using with this electric water heater, and if it’d be better to have gas, or a more modern / efficient / insulated electric one. I may now have reason to research this. According to my wife, the electrician will try to replace a part tomorrow morning, but he warned we may just need a new heater.
We own the place, so for better and worse, there’s no landlord to call.
Darn it, cold showers were feasible in Taipei last week. Not this week.
No idea tbh. I guess…some? I assume these instant water heater things work by passing the water through relatively narrow channels surrounded by a pretty powerful heating element, so I presume they can get blocked eventually. If it’s been running for 15 years though, it doesn’t sound too bad…
Probably the heating element has gone, the get quite calcified and eat into the element due to the minerals in the water. The RCD has tripped out to prevent electric shock.
Only takes about an hour to replace, most plumbers will do it, they drain the tank from the plug at the bottom. (Beware the water goes everywhere unless a drain is close at hand). Fit a new element and “bob’s your uncle”.
Our’s went a couple of months back.
Plumber (electrician?) came this morning: based on what my wife said, it’s actually some kind of seal that’s broken, but the heating element looks like it’s very near the end of its life too. He said he could fix it, but also suggested getting a new heater, since the one we’ve got is old, poorly insulated, and inefficient - he figures with a new one our power consumption for hot water could halve. Maybe it’s an up-sell, maybe not, but I’ve suspected the heater’s a bit crap for a long while.
So, new water heater coming tomorrow, I think around NT$16,000? I have absolutely no idea how fair this is. The electrician made a good first impression for what that’s worth.
Do people hook up new water heaters to washing machines? I don’t even know if our washing machine has any kind of hot water setting. Haven’t really cared, since I mostly gave up on whites here in Taiwan anyway. Er, that’s reversing the cause and effect: I gave up on whites because of the lack of hot-water washing.
Its a great idea, but the filters will probably cost more than the element…i have always lived in houses with wells, which in the areas i have lived have incredibly hard and contaminated water. A new element is under 2k. Not sure about filter costs. But replacing elements is super cheap. Not sure why OP is getting dinged 16k…but every tank company is different. Maybe he has the Iphone version of water heating?
I have switched to gas now. Also now living in a house that has piped (government) water which is rain fed and treated and delivered. First time in decades. 6 years now in this house and only had to change batteries/gas canisters. Usually 3 times a year at $600~700 per tall tank.
I am not a big gas/oil fan in general. but i do find it far more efficient than electric water heaters now. Maybe if electricity was clean here i would go back, but it isnt so I’m not
As @WongUser said check the back of your washer. Unless you have a very fancy one, i doubt it creates heat. I have never seen one, but im not very fancy. I think most, if not all, rely on hot water intake (meaning your water heater heats the water going into the washing machine). And the washer just simply adjusts levels of cold vs hot to match temperature prefferences set by the user.
Honestly i gave up on hot water here as well. If i wanted hot water for clothing i would put the water tank on the roof and do laundry at noon…
The element may be cheaper, but how about the washing machine, dish washer, etc? My POE filter gets replaced yearly and costs a few thousand. That hard water can also stain things.
Fair enough. But i, like the majority here, dont have hot water for laundry nor dishes. Not even a dish washer haha, thats apmost like a unicorn. I see your point though. If a person has so many different machines hooked up , a filter (before enteing the water tank) would be nice. That said, hot water isnt that huge a difference once piped out into other machinery. Seems mostly the heating elements are affected severly. or am I way off? I do have a washing machine for clothes. They seem to last 10 plus years with our shitty water no problem then just gaskets need replacing (also hard and calcified). I wonder how much different the heated water solubles would change that? Worth considering for people with such devices in their homes. I never even thought to think about that.
price seems about right. I recently replaced our gas heater, a new digital one is 13,000.
the regular gas water heater is ~7000 nt, the digital one has a more accurate thermostat that allows you to adjust the water temperature to an exact temperature (e.g. 50 degrees ) as opposed to the regular cheap heaters that have a dial with low-medium -high.
if your electric one is similar to the digital gas one then the price range ia reasonable.
There is a fault/short/whatever in the water heater. It is causing the breaker to trip.
Get a shuidian over. DO NOT service this yourself.
It’s tripping to protect you from a positively shocking shower.
Is this a tankless heater? It should be cheap if it is. You know those little ones that goes next to the shower or whatever. If it has a tank it will be more expensive.
Electric water heater is 100% efficient, you literally require a certain amount of watts to heat water to a certain temperature, a new heater isn’t going to halve your electrical consumption, but on a tanked heater having poor insulation does mean the water will cool off on you, meaning wasted electricity to re-heat them. Tankless has the advantage of not heating water that is sitting in a tank.
Gas would be a better choice from a cost perspective, either that, or find a way of using your AC unit’s condenser heat to heat the water, so you get 2 for the price of one.
