Water only gets warm on electric

[twohand]

I replaced the element in a Suburban SW10DEL water heater in April of this year. This weekend the water is only getting warm, not scalding hot as is usual. I flipped the switches on and off a few times just to see if it was a bad switch. That seemed to fix the problem, but only temporarily. I switched it over to gas mode and everything was working fine. Switched it back to electric, used up the hot water, and now it’s back to being only warm.

Any ideas?

Cheers!

[Semperfi24]

Others with more knowledge can chime in, but if I had to guess I would say its the thermostat. There is 2 thermostats. One for gas. One for electric. If the gas gets its hot, and the electric gets is warm, Id guess the thermostat on the electric side isnt reading correctly.

[twohand]

Update: Saturday I switched from gas to electric. On Sunday the water was lukewarm. I think that the tstat has a problem on the high end as suggested by Semperfi24. Water gets too hot and the heater shuts down. Plan is to replace the 120V side.

Semperfi24 - Thank you for the input. I’m a Ford man, but a Ford man with good taste - nice truck you have there.

[dalford]

Before you replace it did you try resetting it? It’s covered with a rubber boot. You can see two circular indentations in the rubber. Press on them to see if one resets. I think the top one is the electric thermostat but press on both of them.

[Odyknuck]

Try bypassing the ON/OFF switch to eliminate it from the equation.

[twohand]

Update:

dalford - tried the reset several times.

Odyknuck - checked the element switch and the inside panel switch for continuity with my handy-dandy Fluke 77. Both good. The element switch was looking and feeling a bit brittle, so I replaced it for a whopping $6 from Amazon. Inside panel switch has not lit since last year when powered on, but that’s fine by me. There’s plenty of other “power on” lights in the camper.

Replaced the tstat assembly as suggested by Semperfi24. Made sure there was 120VAC at the tstat, then waited about an hour.

Problem appears to be solved. Thanks to everyone for their input.

Cheers!