We really appreciate your likes, shares and subscriptions! This is the home inspection channel. How does electric water heater work and why am I running out of hot water? Let's see. Well, it's pretty simple and quite interesting if you ask me. First of all, we have the cold water coming in. How do I know this is the cold water supply? Because that has the shutoff handle and you'd need an isolation valve if you were ever to replace the tank. Makes sense. When the cold water comes in, there's something called a dip tube that discharges the coldest water down to the bottom element. Thereby, the hottest water is drawn off the top, serving each fixture. You wouldn't want to run out of hot water, right? Typically most water heaters are going to have two elements and the elements are designed to operate independently. Okay, how would you know? Well, that's where we go. Look at the sticker. When you look at the sticker, you'll typically see something that says upper element, 4500 watts .Lower element, 4500 watts. Total 4500 watts. That's how I know they operate independently. Only one time in my whole career did I ever find one that was actually designed for both elements to operate simultaneously. Now, you might have a little smaller unit and yours is 3500 watts, but it's the same thing. You get my drift? Now, there are a couple of safety features on here. First of all, we have a temperature pressure relief valve. If something goes wrong and it builds up too much pressure or too much temperature, there's a way for it to get out a safety release valve, and this will terminate it to a safe location. Now, there's also something called a pressure relief valve, and that's typically located on the supply side. And in this case, it's not at the tank, it's outside at the water main. And that's it. It's pretty simple. Now, you might be asking all of a sudden, my water heater is running out of water, hot water, faster than it used to. I get it. That might mean one of your elements has gone bad. The stuff happens. The good news is they can be replaced. You typically want to call a plumber for that. They'll empty the tank, turn the power off, empty the tank and take out an element and replace. If your water heater isn't that old, that is probably a good option. Now, if you get a water heater that's 15 years old, sometimes your best bet is just to replace the whole unit because they're just not designed to last forever. It just is what it is. But that might be why you're running out of hot water, because there's only one trying to service the whole thing and keep you happy, being it's just not working. But that's it. It's pretty simple stuff.
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