Atwood Water Heater - Diagnosis Thoughts?
All you Atwood water heater gurus - had a second occurrence of a strange issue this morning and would like to have some feedback on my troubleshooting thoughts. I am running on electric full time and ...
Forum Discussion
All who have offered suggestions, thank you.
I was able to dig a little deeper into this tonight and wanted to update everyone.
Access is terrible with this thing - rear kitchen with the water heater tucked into the back corner under the sink. I have to try to squeeze into the cabinet to get to this relay unless I pull the water heater out. So, I squeezed in and confirmed that the relay was stuck closed. Wiggled the wires a little and heard it click back open. Pulled it out and found what I think is the root cause. It appears that one of the 120v connections was not too good. It heated up and began to oxidize and become intermittent. I believe that the intermittent connection and associated arcing has stressed the contacts and has caused them to become sticky. Everything still seems tight except for the one connector which I need to replace and I am planning to replace the relay as well but all of this will need to wait until I have time to pull things out. It is just too tight to work inside the cabinet. Meanwhile it is working OK on gas so I will be able to have hot water.
Thanks for all of your suggestions. I will continue to investigate the things that you have suggested as a part of my final resolution.
Thanks again,
Terry
I was able to dig a little deeper into this tonight and wanted to update everyone.
Access is terrible with this thing - rear kitchen with the water heater tucked into the back corner under the sink. I have to try to squeeze into the cabinet to get to this relay unless I pull the water heater out. So, I squeezed in and confirmed that the relay was stuck closed. Wiggled the wires a little and heard it click back open. Pulled it out and found what I think is the root cause. It appears that one of the 120v connections was not too good. It heated up and began to oxidize and become intermittent. I believe that the intermittent connection and associated arcing has stressed the contacts and has caused them to become sticky. Everything still seems tight except for the one connector which I need to replace and I am planning to replace the relay as well but all of this will need to wait until I have time to pull things out. It is just too tight to work inside the cabinet. Meanwhile it is working OK on gas so I will be able to have hot water.
Thanks for all of your suggestions. I will continue to investigate the things that you have suggested as a part of my final resolution.
Thanks again,
Terry
