I should mention my past experience with the sears dual wattage water heater. With any conventional water heater, if your hot water goes out, you can walk into any hardware store and buy a replacement heating element for less than $15, and have hot water again within about an hour. With the old sears dual watt heaters, we always had to order the heating element, and with shipping, it usually cost around $40, and you have to wait anywhere from 3-4 days to a week for the part to arrive. I had thought that sears had stopped making these units, but from this posting, I see that they are still available. If it were me, I would go ahead and order an extra heating element, and keep it handy, as the ones that you would buy from the hardware stores will not fit. These heaters were built to sears specifications, and parts are very seldom available locally. Just a friendly suggestion for future reference.