Camco Hybrid Water Heater - Not working

j-d wrote:
Glad you're OK. Have a Blessed Christmas!

Hope you had a blessed Christmas as well!!! We are back in Austin for three months and then back to the road.

Have a great New Year, too!!

Glad you're OK. Have a Blessed Christmas!

Late addition to this thread.

But here's what happened. I tested everything as outlined and everything, surprisingly, seemed to work. And here was the problem:

Cold water and cold weather. The overnight low the night we had the problem was about 8 degrees.

A few days later the weather warmed up and, lo and behold, we had long-lasting hot water. Honestly, it had never occurred to me that the ambient temperature would affect the at-tap temperature so much.

The shower is at the farthest point from the water heater and the water was losing heat on the way over to the shower. Plus, the fill-water was near-freezing, so it cooled off the water heater quickly. The electric heater works great, for the most part, but it doesn't heat nearly as quickly as gas.

In any case, this was a non-event but at least if my heater does go south I can trouble-shoot it.

Thanks and thanks and thanks.

At the outlet it pluggs into check for power (Test lamp at least 100 watts, trouble lamp, drop cord, that kind)

At the element.. Disconnect wires and use Multi Meter to measure resistance, YOu should see 1 OHM or less (near short, meter may indicate a short) the element is less than 1 ohm hot.

The connector to the device has two round as I recall "hollow" contacts (Socket type) With the tank cold they should show power as well

NOTE, test this carefully

Run down
No power to outlet.. Well it don't work w/o 120vac,, Find out why
No contenunity in element.. need new element,,, odds are that is NOT your problem less you ran it dry.
No power at element connector.. Bad T-Stat-Bad cord-Bad plug.
T-Stat is suspect #1

Have you checked the t-stats to see if the High Limit Control has tripped......it has to be manually reset (Red button depressed) if it tripped.

If it did trip.....then the normal t-stat didn't open when it should have


If not tripped.......

Then with switch ON you should have power from switch to Hi T-stat (Blue wire) and then from T-stat (Black wire) to element. (With water cold so t-stat is closed)

Test the outlet it's plugged into, with another light/appliance/device that you know is working. The light on our water heater lit up too, but the neutral from the source was open.

I don't know if you have a six (which I suspect) or ten gallon (not usually in a C) water heater, but the Camco kit is 500-watts give or take 100 depending on tank size. With the thing disconnected, power off, DVOM on Low Ohms, should measure a couple dozen ohms if the thermostat is cold enough to close its contacts.

And, I dispute your account of electrical incompetence. You ARE The Man who found that broken Stop Light Wire!!!

Okay. I'll spend a little time on this tomorrow if the weather holds and report back. Thanks! The power circuit is hot, I know that much and the power switch does light up. Will check for power before and after the thermostat next.

Duplicate advice deleted...

Assuming you have even a basic multimeter, I would set it to AC voltage, then touch each lead to each of the two leads that would go to the heating element. Then turn the thermostat up high and see if you show around 110-120 volts.

Mine just plugs into an electric outlet, so make sure you have power at that soured as well. We can follow up after hearing your test results