This is another job left over from the tale end of last year. The original problem was an immersion hot water heater that wasn’t producing hot water since a previous plumber showed up, tightened the heater and caused a short circuit. We showed up and could not find an immediate problem with one exception. The thermostats were set to 70 degrees and had been set to 80 degrees when the previous bloke called ’round. We set the thermostats to 60 which is high enough to prevent legionella and low enough to help prevent scalding.

When we tested the circuits we found that although we were receiving power at the thermostats we didn’t get a good reading through the heating element. A normal reading should be around 18-19 ohms and this one was reading around 15 ohms. It was decided to drain down the tank until we could remove the upper element and change it. It took a half hour to syphon enough water to remove the element. What a surprise! The element looked like it had exploded! The pieces were trapped inside the vessel and the element wire was twisted around everything. After a bit of careful manoeuvring the old element was finally fished out and the new unit screwed into place and tightened up. The electrical connections were re-attached and the circuit was turned back on.

The tank was refilled and then the boost was switched on to see if the system would work as prescribed. It did.

Time to pack up and depart.

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