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srosegraphics · Feb 25, 2009, 04:19 AM

We have not had any hot water for 3 weeks. Here is what has been done:

We had an AO Smith water heater and replaced both thermostats and both heating elements 3 different times (with two different plumbers).
We had an electrician look at it and all of the power is going to it.
We replaced the AO Smith with a Whirlpool professionally installed.

We get farily warm water for about 2 minutes and then it turns cold. We have not gotten even remotely HOT water since we first noticed the problem 3 weeks ago.

Please help... we are going to start turning on each other if we don't get a hot shower soon! :p

massplumber2008 · Feb 25, 2009, 04:40 AM

Srosegraphics:

Sounds like the DIP TUBE (see picture) may have gotten damaged during installation.. Here, if the dip tube is damaged or broken the cold water would end up feeding into the hot water outlet directly instead of feeding to the bottom of the heater as it is supposed to do. This would result in symptoms like you describe.

Of course, could also be improperly wired or a number of other things.. ;)

Call the company that installed the new water heater... whatever the issue is... they should resolve this 100% for you.

Let us know what happens... OK?

MARK

ballengerb1 · Feb 25, 2009, 07:52 AM

Are all plumbing fixtures getting cool water or just one in particular? Considering the fixes you have tried I doubt that the problem can now be blamed on bad dip tube on the new unit. The symptoms are right for a dip tube but what about all those elements, stats and other plumbers?

massplumber2008 · Feb 25, 2009, 12:58 PM

Are you on fuses or breakers?

Let us know.

afaroo · Feb 25, 2009, 11:45 PM

As Mark says, you may have problem with the dip tube, open the links below will give you an idea how the dip tube works and hot to replace it, Thanks.

John

How a water heater dip tube works and what it looks like.

How to Repair a Broken Dip Tube

srosegraphics · Feb 26, 2009, 04:15 AM

Thanks so much for all of the responses. I wanted to give an update in hopes that it will help someone else in the future. We finally got a plumber in who knew what he was doing and he diagnosed the problem in 2 minutes. There was a cracked pipe in the crawl space. So the water was heating, it just wasn't getting to us because it was all going into the crawl space. :mad:

Plumber #1: $248 and one day of missed work
Plumber #2: 1/2 day of missed work
Electrician: $171
New Water Heater: $556 and 1/2 day of missed work
Getting a plumber who knows what he is doing: priceless!

massplumber2008 · Feb 26, 2009, 07:13 PM

Quite a mess... huh?

Does this all suggest that you didn't even need to replace the original water heater to begin with? Let me know.

MARK

srosegraphics · Feb 27, 2009, 07:06 AM

Mark,
Well, that is the question now isn't it? I think that we probably did not need to replace the water heater to begin with and if the first plumber had diagnosed the problem we would have had a $200 bill and hot water that day. But, there is no way to know and we learned an expensive lesson.

afaroo · Feb 27, 2009, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by srosegraphics

Thanks so much for all of the responses. I wanted to give an update in hopes that it will help someone else in the future. We finally got a plumber in who knew what he was doing and he diagnosed the problem in 2 minutes. There was a cracked pipe in the crawl space. So the water was heating, it just wasn't getting to us because it was all going into the crawl space. :mad:

Plumber #1: $248 and one day of missed work
Plumber #2: 1/2 day of missed work
Electrician: $171
New Water Heater: $556 and 1/2 day of missed work
Getting a plumber who knows what he is doing: priceless!

My question is if the pipe was cracked that bad that you were losing your hot water how come it was not noticeable, just for my curiosity where all the water was going, Thanks.

John

srosegraphics · Feb 27, 2009, 11:35 AM

The water was going into the crawl space. As soon as the last plumber opened the door to the crawl space, he could see all of the water and feel the heat from it.

I occurs to us now that we were getting a lot of condensation on our windows over the last couple of weeks and that was probably the heat and humidity from the water coming up from the crawl space.