I have a Bradford White water heater that is going to be replaced. I just can't get it done very quickly.

The top element is shot. Power but no heat.

Can I rewire it so that when the upper thermostat tries to power the upper element, it goes instead to the lower thermostat?

Clearly the upper thermostat is going to be too cold to turn off for a long time. Until then, it would provide power to the lower thermostat which should also turn on the lower element until there's enough hot water in the bottom of the tank.

Relying on convection to mix the upper and lower parts of the tank, I would expect to get at least lukewarm water with the bottom thermostat cycling on and off pretty regularly. If it ever gets to the desired temp, either the top or bottom thermostat will kill power to the lower element.

Based on the B-W installation manual, I would accomplish this by

(1) Disconnecting the upper element from the upper thermostat by removing the yellow wire from T2.

(2) Move the black wire on T4 (lower thermostat power) from T4 to T2.

See page 7 of the manual ta [www.manualslib.com]...

This will cause the lower thermostat to be powered anytime the temperature on the upper thermostat would call for heat.

Only has to last a week or so.

Thanks!



Edited 1 times.

I would suggest replacing then upper element seems much more sensible than bypassing the thermal cutoff and causing a very dangerous situation