Why did you have to replace the water heater? What was wrong with it?

 

Breakers DO wear out. And using them for a switch does increase wear and tear leading to false trips down the road. But breakers are relatively inexpensive.

 

I have an electric water heater in my container cabin. It runs on 110 volts, and holds ten gallons. When I wired it, I installed a switch on the wall like a light switch. When I am away for a few days I turn it off, and shut off the well.

This water heater is about ten years old, I had installed it in a travel trailer before I moved it to the cabin. It has been turned on and off hundreds of times, and is still going strong.

 

in that 10 years did you ever once replace the anode?

electric hot water heaters need 3 things

anode
heating elements
themostats

if you keep an anode in it and flush the tank regular , then you replace heating elements and thermostats as they fail

the tank shouldn't go bad if you keep an anode in it

thing is many plumbers will only replace entire water heaters A and B no one does the maintenance

also yes breakers wear out , BUT it is a 5 minute job to replace one and many places use the breaker to turn off the lights every night and on every morning. switches wear out also.

I would continue turning it off each time you leave , but replace the anode ever other year

also 10 years on an element isn't that bad , it might be harder on the element to start heating from cold water , but if you heat water 24/7 and your not there most of it , it wastes electric , leaves something to leak , and could result in bigger damage than replacing heating elements in 10 years.

 

in that 10 years did you ever once replace the anode?

Not yet.

 

Our 40 gallon electric water heater is going on 25 years.

We drain and flush each fall and change the elements every 5 years or so. We have very hard water. We have not changed the anode. Guess we should check that when we do the yearly flush in a few weeks.

 

Thanks for the responses.
I'm going to go back to the routine of shutting off the water main to cabin and turning off the breaker to water heater when I leave.

 

We bought an old farm house (original part of it we believe is mid-1800's). At some point in its history it had a push-matic breaker box installed. That is the service entrance panel to boot (everything else on the farm feeds from it - a cross I hate to bear, but it is what it is until we can afford to upgrade/rewire).

When we bought the property and moved here we found several breakers that were bad. After about a month the breaker for the hot water heater went bad. Of course, like an idiot, I drove to town thinking I could pick one up at a store and be back going. Nope. Not a snowball's chance in hell.

So it was on to the Internet. I found an off-brand that makes them now and they are available on Amazon. Since that fiasco, and having had to replace multiple breakers already, I have many replacements sitting here at the ready - every size we need from 15a single pole to 60a double pole for the shop.

If you never have to deal with push-matic breakers - consider yourself very lucky. If you do have to deal with them - get at least 2 of every size you have, and the common ones (15-20a single poles) get 3-4 of so you have them NOW and aren't waitng several days or a week.