I'm just posting this out of curiousity. A woman I used to do work for, for many years just called me to ask me for advice about her water heater. She lives out of state now, so I can not actually see the problem. She claims the electric water heater was smoking, and said that after her husband turned off the breaker it continued to "burn". Then her husband cut the electric cable to finally make out the "fire". Although she said she did not actually see any fire, just smoke.
I should mention that I worked as a plumber for 8 years before I retired, not including the many years I was a handyman doing plumbing, electrical and other repair work before that. Yet I never ran across this type of problem. However, I worked in a city where almost everyone had natural gas heaters. While I have worked on several electric heaters, they were few compared to the gas ones.
Yet, I am in a fog on this matter. This woman said that she had noticed for a few weeks that there was not enough hot water. On Friday she went into the basement to do laundry, and noticed the smoke, and got her husband.
Neither of them are handy, so I question this whole matter. However, I know they are not going to lie about it. I should mention that that water heater was just installed about 3 years ago. I know this for fact because she had called me to find out the name of the person that took over for me, and I know he replaced it. In fact I told her it might still be under warranty.
Anyhow, knowing that there are only 4 electrical parts, (2 elements and 2 thermostat controls) plus some wire, what the heck could really burn? The element is in the water, and while I know they are the most likely part to burn out, they can not smoke under water. This seems to only leave the thermostat controls....... Has anyone ever seen one of them go up in smoke? Once I ran into a defective one, but I have never heard of them burning....
Anyone have any opinion, or ever expreience this? Somehow this just dont seem to make much sense to me.... Most people replace gas heaters with electric ones because of the lesser fire hazzard, and now I hear this......
Mark