I am quick to learn but this one has got me baffled. My hot water went cold so I checked the tank. I have a little knowledge on them so iwas going to check the heating ellements. Before I would do this I was going to unplug it. Well to my surprise the plug and sockett were burnt out. I went to home depot to buy replacement parts and they said I have to straight wire it. My problem I'm having is this. There are 3 wires coming from out of the wall where the 220 socket once was (black ,blue, and white)im pretty sure the white and black are the hot wires and I'm not sure on the blue. I assumed that it was the ground wire so I hooked it to the ground wire going to the tank needless to say when I hooked all wires and turned on braker it sill kept trippping could this be because the elements are bad or I have the blue wire hooked up wrong. Gladly to say no fires yet:confused:

Assumption Mother of all evils. So they say. Where in your panel box does the blue wire terminate? Might give you a heads up of what's going on with that blue wire. Ive never seen blue . But then Im not an electrician. Ill keep watching!

The wire was attached to the burnt out socket on the right side and the black and white wire were attached to the left side on separate screws. I'm not sure of origin but when I connected to the ground wire it tripped the breaker and when I disconnected it nothing happened to the breaker but water did not heat up:confused:

Kudles - Go and open your panel box and take the inside cover out ( NOTE - BE VERY CAREFUL TAKEING IT OUT AND Don't TOUCH SOMETHING BEHIND IT THAT WILL CURL YOUR HAIR< IT MIGHT BE SAFER FOR YOU TO JUST PULL THE MAIN BREAKER) after removeing the cover look for a double breaker that has a blue wire hooked to the breaker, on panel dorr on inside there should be a list of the breakers and where each one goes to , find the one that says ( HOT WATER TANK,IF it has the blue wire hooked to the breaker then it is the other hot wire for 220 & the white wire is ground . Mr500 gave you a good answer ;;GOOD LUCK & GOD BLESS ::: F.B.E.

Hot wires from a 220/240 volt circuit can be black, red, blue and white and the white, by code, should be marked with one of the other colors (usually marked with black). White is typically the neutral wire.

Flying Blue actually gave the best answer: go to panel box and see which two wires are attached to the double breaker.

I would recommend also that you purchase a circuit tester (inexpensive ones can be a few dollars) to test leads so you can tell which ones are hot and more importantly tell you when they are "dead" so you can safely work with them.

Normally water heaters require 240V/30 amp power and are usually hard wired. That is to say that they are connected directly to the line. You should have a double pole 30 amp breaker and 2-conductor 10 gauge cable. A 2-conductor cable has 3 wires, two conductors (black, white) and a ground. Both ends of the white is remarked to some color other than white or green.

The black and white are connect to the breakers and the ground is connected to the grounding buss in the panel. There is no nuetral conductor. At the heater the ground is connected to the ground wire or the frame. The black and white are connected to the two heater wires.

You may wire it using a plug and receptacle but you must use a 240V/30 amp plug and receptacle.

The burned receptacle and 3-conductor (4-wire) cable make me question the previous installation.