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Water heater wiring???
Does anyone have an electrical drawing of an electric water heater? It has two wires, R&W going to both heating elements. It is a basic Rheem system, 240v single phase and 50 gal capacity. I am not sure if you needed all of that, but it was on the face plate. Thanks everyone!
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You would need the specific diagram for your model, but basically the thermostats serve two purposes:
(1) To allow one and ONLY one element to be on at any given time. The circuit for the WH is wired to handle the watts of ONE element. (residential)
(2) They sequece the heating for optimum performance: getting all the water hot eventually during idle, and reheating the replacement cold input as water is used. The lower element does most of the work, with the top one kicking on if you are using a lot of water.
The reovery rate of residential electric units is fairly slow, so naturally if you draw a lot of water, it simply turns cold because the heating elements cannot keep up.
see page 20 of this link for some sample wiring diagrams from Rheem:
Last edited by SSN596; 02-10-2006, 11:15 AM.
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