How to change the temperature on an electric water heater

Changing your hot water heater temperature is easy. However, before adjusting your hot water heater temperature, you should read our article : Hot Water Temperature: The Danger of Setting Your Water Heater Too Hot because if it’s set too high, it can cause severe burns. It it’s set too low, you can have some legionnaires disease developing in the water heater. In addition, if you are not comfortable changing the temperature yourself, we recommend you call a qualified plumber.

Every hot water tank has different panels that allow you to change set the temperature of your tank. Most of the panels are similar and even located in the same general areas no matter what type of water heater you have. Most electric water heaters have two thermostats. 

On electric water heaters most have thermostats on the top, and one is on the bottom. Some water heaters have their thermostats behind an insulated control board. Tankless water heaters give you readouts and controls for temperature through a display window.

If you are running out of hot water, the problem can come from somewhere else. We have dedicated an entire blog post about this: No Hot Water? Here’s 8 Reasons Why And Quick Way To Fix It.

Series of Steps When Changing your hot Water Heater Temperature

You need to test your water before you ever change the settings on your water heater. You do this at a water faucet location by turning the hot water on and letting it run for a minute or two. Then use your meat thermometer to gauge what temperature your water is by holding it in hot water.

If you determine you need to adjust your hot water setting so the water gets hotter or cooler you can follow the below steps to make that happen for electric or gas water heaters.

  1. Always start by turning off the power supply going to the water heater. This usually involves turning off the power at your circuit breaker location.
  2. Go to the thermostat control panel. You may have to use a screwdriver to get access to the knobs that control your hot water temperature.
  3. If your water heater has insulation, you want to pull that away from the equipment you’re using so you have clear visual on what you’re doing.
  4. A flathead screwdriver is what you use most of the time to adjust your thermostat settings. Make sure you adjust both the upper and lower thermostat is you have two of them and make sure the temperature in both matches or the top thermostat can be a few degrees above the lower thermostat.
  5. Put all your insulation back and put the control panel back in its original position.
  6. Go to your circuit breaker location and flip your power back on. There are times you’ll need to relight a pilot light if you have a gas water heater.

You can’t use your thermostat to measure the hot water heater temperature right away. You have to give it at least three hours, and then you can test for your hot water temperature. If you are unsure of the ideal temperature for your hot water, we invite you to visit our article on this topic: Hot Water Temperature: The Danger of Setting Your Water Heater Too Hot

If you have adjusted the hot water heater temperature and you don’t see any difference, the problem may be somewhere else. An older tank could be less efficient due to the build-up of lime on the heating elements. In order to avoid this situation, we always advise our customers to install a Corro-Protec impressed current anode. In addition to preventing corrosion in the tank, Corro-Protec reduces limescale build-up in the tank and ensures good long-term operation.

How to change the temperature on an electric water heater
How to Change Your Hot Water Heater Temperature In 6 Steps 2

Has the temperature of your hot water changed dramatically recently?

Before you attempt to adjust the temperature on an electric hot water heater yourself, you should consider hiring a professional hot water installer/repairer.

While in some cases it is quite easy to adjust the hot water temperature, it can be tricky and you need to be sure it is done correctly.

If you do find the temperature of your hot water has changed / gone up or down drastically, or is inconsistent, this is the sign of a problem with your hot water system. In that case the best thing to do is hire a professional to evaluate and fix the issue.

Call the Hot Water experts on 1800 633 920 or send us a message and we’ll send someone over quickly to help with your electric hot water temperature issue!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

We’re on electric water heater and we’re talking about changing the temperature settings for your comfort level and your home. This is also a task that requires us to turn the power off, so make sure, first and foremost, that you turn the power off before you ever remove one of these panels on the water heater, and then once come back and double check yourself.

Always double check yourself because a lot of times the boxes aren’t marked right or maybe the breaker doesn’t work or there’s something faulty in the electricity.

These will hurt you if you don’t check and double check yourself. So what we do, we have our power off so we’re going to go ahead and open up the cover and get into our little mechanical room on our water heater here.

The next thing we’re looking for is power. There are two places that I check for this on a water heater. The first one is down here at the element. Typically, if the power is on it’s going to be towards this element, but there’s also another place I check before I call it good.

Now you can see that there is no voltage at this element here. The next one is a little trickier to get in. To check, I always reach up at the top here, in the top corner, just the plastic itself and I pull this plastic thing off- don’t worry it snaps right back on.

The next thing I do is check up here for power, at the top two screws because there is power here all the time regardless. Sometimes the power transfers to the lower element and that’s why I say check both spots. If you’re in one cover it’s just as easy to pull this off. If you want to start there you’ll know for sure right away.

As you can see I’ve got no power at the unit, so we’re safe to go ahead and work with this. Now, the thermostat in these- there are two thermostats in an electric water heater; there’s an upper thermostat and there’s a lower thermostat. You ask why there two, the reason being is once you get the water to a certain temperature up here for that first hour of recovery, it switches to the bottom to go ahead and finish heating the rest of the tank.

Electric Hot Water Heater

Now, when it does that, typically the bottom element is lower temperature on the thermostat by 10 degrees or so, then the top one, due to a phenomenon called temperature stacking, which is pretty simple if you think about it. Heat rises, it does the same thing in hot water and in the tank itself, so your top is going to be a little bit hotter than your bottom so that they don’t alternate wrong.

It’s something that a lot of people don’t know about that’s pretty important. So, your lower element is usually one setting lower than you upper element because each setting on these is about 10 degrees. Now we get into the thermostat itself. Each one is a little bit different. Some of these thermostats have numbers on them and some of them have letters on them.

This one, in particular, has numbers on it and as you can see, it goes up to a hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit on this thermostat- this particular one. I like to see the hot water at about a hundred and ten degrees, especially when you’re dealing with the elderly and small children because it is potentially very, very dangerous any higher than that and you’ve got some time still to move away from the hot water before it scourges your skin.

Baby skin is very, very tender and elderly people just can’t move very fast, so those are the two things that you have to be very aware of. Hot water is potentially very dangerous, it’s something that we all use every day. A lot of us end up taking for granted until your water heater goes out or goes bad but it’s something that we need to pay attention to (temperature wise) because it can be very potentially dangerous.

Okay. Now, to change the temperature setting, what you need is a smaller screwdriver. As before we used a larger one. You may have a couple of different sizes. You’re looking for a smaller screwdriver to do a job like this because it’s got to fit in the slot. What you do is you fit it in the slot and you turn it clockwise to turn it up. Did you hear that click? That click means that it turned on. And you turn it counterclockwise to turn it down.

This particular one on the top is set at a hundred and twenty-five. I don’t recommend you set them this high just because that’s a pretty high temperature. I like to see the top one set at the top side on the electric heater at about 110 to 115 degrees and the bottom one 105 to 110. And you got that stacking that happens, that makes your water heater very efficient. That’s how you adjust the thermostat on this. Now, there’s also a redundant thermostat in the lower half once again that you have to adjust to.

Can I change the temperature on my water heater?

One easy way to care for it is to properly set the water heater's temperature. Gas valve water heaters are really easy to adjust. Find the knob on the valve and set the temperature between 115 and 120 degrees. This lowered setting will protect the tank from overheating and will take less energy to heat the water.

How do you turn the temp up on a hot water heater?

Adjust the thermostat's temperature setting using a flathead screwdriver. If your heater has two thermostats, both need to be adjusted the same amount, with the top thermostat set a few degrees higher than the bottom thermostat. Replace the insulation. Reinstall the access panel.

How do I lower the temperature on my water heater?

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS.
1) Find the current temperature. Measure the beginning temperature of your hot water using a thermometer at the tap farthest from the water heater. ... .
2) Mark the setting, then turn down the thermostat. ... .
3) Measure and adjust. ... .
4) Mark the new temperature. ... .
5) Turn down or off when away..