Water Heater Woes

For the past few days, we've had water heater problems.  There is never a good time for home maintenance problems but this is a lousy week for us to have an added thing that must be done as soon as possible.  

First, I made a trip to Lowes to pick up a heating element.  A bad heating element would have been the typical problem so that is what I replaced first.  Even if the source of the problem wasn't the element, it wouldn't be a bad idea to install a new one so I did that.  Theoretically, a new one should be more efficient than one that has been used for many years.  Our water heater is now about 15 years old so it is near the end of its life span.  Actually, it is probably beyond its life span already.  

With the heating element on hand, I then went about draining the water heater which was a bit time consuming.  I again had to clear a path to the back wall of the house (like I did to run water out to our outdoor shower a couple of months ago) so I could drill a hole in the wall.  Once the hole was drilled, I snaked our garden hose through the hole so I could drain the tank out to the far backyard.  

After the tank was empty, I tried to flush it a bit but none of the gunk inside seemed to be moving.  I took note of this so I could start looking for a new water heater so we will be prepared when this tank eventually needs to be replaced...  which will likely be sooner rather than later.  For now, the tank is holding water just fine and now I had a new element in it.  Hopefully that is all it needed.

For a day or two, it seemed to be working fine so I was relieved but, this morning, I noticed that the hot water was only lukewarm.  The problem was not fixed by replacing the heating element.

The next part to replace would be the thermostat so I ate breakfast and then made another trip to Lowes to pick up a thermostat.  Now the thermostat is also replaced...  we'll see if this fixes the problem...  hopefully...

Here are the old parts...