Water Heater Solutions
Recently my wife and I woke up to no hot water in the RV. I hadn't planned on replacing the heating element so quickly but I guess we had stayed in West Texas long enough where the hard water had destroyed the part in less than a year. I found the part at Camping World for $36.92 which was not the $10 that other RV owners had spoke about in the Youtube videos. I did try Home Depot but the size and wattage they had didn't match the factory part, so not wanting to take any chances on the wrong part I dropped the extra $26.00 and got the exact part. I installed the part without any trouble and the Youtube videos were spot on for the proper heating element installation. However, after pressuring up the tank, I found the gasket was not seated and water was spraying out around the seal. Fortunately, I was able to take some of the pressure off the tank, adjust the heating element and stop the leak without emptying the tank. With the part installed and the water heater back together again, I was feeling like the master handyman until an hour later... "Honey, we still don't have any hot water"... So it was back to Google to see what other issues could have been the problem rather than the heating element. I did find a thread where an RV owner had the same issue and the feedback on the issue was all over the map. The suggestions were centered around faulty wiring and breakers which left me feeling like I was destined to taking the rig in to the shop. Fortunately, I always look at the simplest solution and see if it will fix the problem before moving to a more complicated / pricey solution. I turned the power off at the main power supply in the RV then waited an hour. Still no hot water. Then I flipped the switch on and off at the hot water heater making sure the switch was pressed down firmly in the "on" position. One hour later we had hot water. Go figure... I'm thinking I make need to replace the outdoor switch at some point, but for now we have hot water so I'm not going to go there for now. I'm thinking it sure would be nice if the water heater manufactures could put a temperature gage in their units which would take a lot of the guess work out of issues like this. I hope this helps any RV'ers who may experience this issue in the future. Happy Travels
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Michael
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