I have a 50 gallon AO Smith electric water heater installed upstairs in my 2 level condo. My condo is only 3 years old, and so of course so is the water heater. I didn't know it when I bought the house, but the hot water has to travel a long way from the heater to the kitchen sink and it would take around 3 minutes to get hot water there after I turned on the tap, as the water has to get from the top level down and through the slab floor to get there. I can't believe builders would think that anyone would find this acceptable! So to fix that problem, I installed a Watts recirculating pump at the water heater, and that has worked fine and solved the problem until now. I noticed I didn't have any hot water and investigated. I first checked the breaker on my fuse panel and found it hadn't tripped. I then checked the elements in my water heater and found both the upper and the lower ones were fine and not shorted to ground. I then noticed that the upper thermostat, which has a breaker on it, had tripped. I reset it, and it was heating for a bit, until it tripped again. Thinking that this unit was defective, I replaced that and it worked for a while, but then tripped again. I unplugged the Watts pump just to see what happened, and it hasn't tripped the breaker since then, but I'm back to the original problem of why I installed it in the first place, which is hot water taking too long to get where I need it. The pump is working, as before the breaker on the thermostat kicked out, I was able to get some hot water in a short time. What could be wrong here? I don't want to replace the pump if I don't have to as it's fairly expensive.
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