Plumbing

Final Water Heater Checks

Name: Final Water Heater Checks
Uploaded: 2025-10-01T15:59:03Z
Duration: 2 min 59 s
Description: Complete a thorough water heater service call with two final steps: verify faucet temperature matches the thermostat setting (120–125°F) and confirm the tank delivers its rated capacity—about half a tub of hot water for a 40-gallon unit. These checks ensure thermostats, elements, and capacity are all functioning correctly, giving both technician and resident confidence in the repair.

Complete a thorough water heater service call with two final steps: verify faucet temperature matches the thermostat setting (120–125°F) and confirm the tank delivers its rated capacity—about half a tub of hot water for a 40-gallon unit. These checks ensure thermostats, elements, and capacity are all functioning correctly, giving both technician and resident confidence in the repair.

Electric Water Heater

Diagnostic

Appliances

Mark Cukro

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Transcript

Okay, so we've used a multimeter. That's how you check voltage, check the thermostats, the mechanical function and the temperature setting. You can use a multimeter. You can also use a clamp on AM probe to check the amperage, if you like, on the wires. But most often if you check the voltage and the ohms in the elements and all of the specs are set, usually when one group of specs like the Ohms and the voltage are correct, everything else will be like the amperage based on Ohm's Law.

You can still check it if you like. Now we know that the thermostats function. That the elements are good. They've, we've mechanically, uh, called for heat on both and both elements, and both thermostats got voltage and delivered voltage. Now, the last thing that we can do, there's really two that are often overlooked, is if this is a 40 gallon water heater, it should fill the bathtub halfway with hot water.

So it's a good idea to make sure that a full tank of hot water can actually fill the tub halfway. And before we do that, we'll check the temperature at the faucet again to make sure that it's at a hundred twenty, a hundred twenty five degrees, whatever setting it is that your company allows you to, uh, set the temperature.

So I'll close this up. Let's go check the water temperature one final time. Then we'll see if the tub fills up halfway, and then we'll be done with our service quest and we can clean up and be on our way. We're back in the sink, so let's run the water now. If we set the temperature at 1 25. And the water was too hot to begin with.

The water will still remain too hot until that tank is emptied, and then the entire tank is reheated. However, I wanna make sure that we have hot water. You can use whatever thermometer you have usually. Usually the digital ones are preferred and best for this application. But I wanna make sure we have hot.

Yes we do. Water's nice and warm, so let's go check the tub. Excellent. So now the standard tub is 80 gallons. Some are plus or minus, but we should get at least a third to half of a full tub. Of water at the temperature that we set. Okay, so we'll run the water and make sure it actually gets delivered. Okay, good.

The water's coming to temperature. So for the sake of this video, I'm not gonna fill the tub all the way, but the tub should fill approximately halfway now. You know, mechanically the thermostats work temperature, uh. Why is the, the thermostats work, they match the setting. When you put it on 125 degrees, the water is 125 degrees.

Not only that, but if it's a 30 gallon water heater, we should get 30 gallons. Some people you can do this is take a five gallon bucket, fill it and dump it eight times, it's 40 gallons. If it's six times, that's 30 gallons. So now you are very thorough in checking and you can guarantee that the water heater works, the thermostats work.

The elements are good. And the water is reaching all of the fixtures at the temperature that you set, and you and the resident will both appreciate it.