The rest of the story
First of all, I want to thank each of you for your input on this issue. I am thoroughly impressed with your willingness to share your ideas and thoughts about this with me.
I have learned a
lot about this issue since I started with this a few days ago. I will answer your questions, then will give you the final chapter.
I sketched a couple of diagrams to show my setup. There is an old one, which shows the original installation, and a new one that shows how it is now after the electrician finished.
There was a single pole 20A breaker for the hot water heater. The wire between that breaker and the HWH is 12 ga. The disconnect appears to be a dual pole switch.
When the electrician finished, he had replaced the single pole switch with a dual pole switch that is rated at 20A.
So, what happened.....
First off, no one can determine why it was installed this way. My suspicion is that one set of contractors assumed that the heater would be gas, and another thought it would be electric. For some reason, they did not verify the voltage when they hooked up the hot water heater. Unfortunately the first owner did not notice a problem, nor did we.
I had an electrician come out today to fix the wiring issue. I was fully prepared for the replacement of the wiring. He told me the setup, then stated that the amperage draw from the hot water heater would be below the maximum allowed for the 12 gauge wire. He shifted another breaker down the panel and put in a two pole breaker with a rating of 20 amps. This supplied 240v to the hot water heater, and the amperage in one leg measured 18.5 amps and 19 amps in the other. His assumption was that the hot water is not under continuous load, so there should not be a problem with the arrangement. He also did not find any other failure in the wiring.
I obviously have a few concerns about this arrangement:
- I am concerned because the strong recommendation from you has been to use 10 gauge wire. Of course, my primary concern is that there could be a fire based on this setup. He said that 12 gauge can carry up to 25 amps without failure, so that makes me feel a little better.
- My other concern is that the amperages are high enough that we could trip the circuit breaker frequently. That could become extremely inconvenient.
- I am also concerned that this will be an issue when I sell the house. I certainly do not want a fire while I am here, but I also do not want to have a future tenant to have a fire. I don't need that on my conscience and I do not want the legal headaches that could be involved.
Thank you all again for your valuable input on this. Your information helped me make the right decision to get an electrician involved. Having written my response, I am now concerned that I should have been more forceful in questioning the final solution.