Why does my hot water heater keep turning off?

Are you saying that there’s no power at the control unit for your heater?

Is your thermostat set to vacation mode?

Did you check your electrical breaker (or fuse) box ?

Also, are you sure it’s an electric water heater? If its gas, is the gas bill paid?

I click the breaker back to the right position, the water heats up again, and then inexplicably turns off. Just cold water comes out of the faucet. It was off for vacation—no vacation mode.

Did you add anything to the electrical load on that breaker? Plug in another lamp, use a hair dryer, etc.?

Sometimes in higher summer temperatures, an older circuit breaker will contract enough to not make contact, but still be in the “on” position. I think when you flip it off and back on, it stays contacted only long enough to heat your water, then contracts again. If it keeps flipping all the way off, you have either too much current flowing through that circuit, or possibly a bad circuit breaker.

Circuit breakers are easy to change-out yourself, but I don’t know how far you are from a hardware store, and only the bigger ones (like Home Depot) are likely to have the matching replacement breaker in stock.

P.S. If you decide to replace the breaker yourself TURN OFF YOUR MAIN POWER FIRST. There is (sometimes deadly) serious current flowing through that breaker box…

Not that it matters, but I should have said that the breaker panel expands in the summer heat. The breaker itself does not contract, but may be old enough to no longer reach the expanding panel.

As we all learned in physics class, an item will contract in the cold, and expand in the heat….

@JLeslie: My floors were refinished, and this started after that. I thought that might have been connected, but nothing is still plugged in anywhere that could be causing this.
@OneBadApple: The circuit breaker may be bad, not sure why though. Doubt that I will replace it. But thanks.
@Judi: It’s electric and bills all paid up.

Have you drained the bottom of the tank? Flush by opening facet at bottom of tank let it run until clear water only is coming out.
It may have a lot of debris on the lower heating coil, including all sorts of stuff from the well !
( Assumption on my part. )

If it’s an electric water heater usually a short or ground within the chassis wiring (wiring inside the unit) will cause a breaker to trip. Sometimes one of the two heating elements will go bad. However, it’s rare (from my experience) for a faulty heating element to cause a breaker to trip since the bad element usually opens the current to the heater. The latter scenerio is still possible though, and sometimes a heating element can ground out.

It’s possible that the breaker itself could be bad, though this is uncommon it does occur. The age of a home can also be a factor, so you may want to make sure you have a thirty amp breaker, and make sure that the wiring that powers the water heater is at least a #10. Sometimes electrical ‘hobbyists’, or weekend warriors who overrate their electrical skills take shortcuts when they do things themselves, and many times they’re not competent.

You could try pulling out the top heater first and disconnecting one of the wires to ensure that the problem isn’t coming from there. You would want to drain the water first, which is why I recommended testing the top element first. There’s a drain nut/plug on the bottom of the tank to get the water level low enough to pull out the top element. I have too little info here, and I can think of several things which could be causing this, and I really don’t want to try to walk a nontechnical person through this for safety and other reasons.

My advice for you (assuming you’re not mechanically inclined) would be to look for the obvious, like a bad wire, leak, or what I’d mentioned above checking the breaker rating. I’d wait for help from someone who’s qualified or smart enough to troubleshoot the problem for you.

This is a new water tank.
I will have the plumbers who put it in come first thing tomorrow to check it out.
Thanks all.

@skfinkel Please give us some feedback and follow-up on the plumbers.

Spoke with plumbers tonight who are going to fit me in a very tight schedule for tomorrow. She said it sounds like burnt out heat unit, easy to fix and under warranty. So, if that is not accurate, I will let you all know.
Thanks again.

So, here is what happened. Plumber came out: hot water heater is fine (just purchased last year). But the breaker is too small for the hot water heater. So an electrician came out and put in a new, higher amp breaker.
All is fixed, and wonderful.
Thanks to all.