Carver Owners Forum

Almost like it has no thermostat to turn it off on its own like a normal heater does. Spin the timer to a 20 minute countdown and then wait until the water warms up? Really sounds odd but it is what it is. Learn something new every day they say.

Davepjr wrote:Qr Bbpost .... this year I had decided to have the mechanics change the element and they said no that it was too far gone and I need to replace the whole thing.

My boat is an '83 and the original water heater still works just fine. Since yours is on a timer I suspect it has even less hours than mine does and could last quite a long time.

Viper wrote:...So out of curiosity, how does this work? You set the timer for a certain length of time and then it shuts the power off to the heater after that, and you have to reset every time you want hot water, or want it at a different time? And as Hans mentioned, how does it know what time it is if you keep disconnecting shore power, you have to reset the current real time when back at a dock? Am I missing something here?

It's just a simple mechanical timer. I'm not sure exactly which one the OP has, but it can be a 1hr, 2 hr or 12 hr timer that just shuts off when time expires. You set it to whatever time (minimum of 20 minutes) that you think you'll be needing hot water. You could set it for 12 hours and you'd have hot water for the next morning and you could reset it before it even expires if you need hot water the rest of the day.

It's usually not the heating element that goes bad although they can fail. The tank itself is aluminum and they oxidate until they puncture. Mine was only 11 years old when I swapped it out because there was so much crud in the tank from oxidation. I now have a filter and an anode to hopefully correct the issue in the long run.

km1125 wrote:Qr Bbpost.....It's just a simple mechanical timer. I'm not sure exactly which one the OP has, but it can be a 1hr, 2 hr or 12 hr timer that just shuts off when time expires. You set it to whatever time (minimum of 20 minutes) that you think you'll be needing hot water. You could set it for 12 hours and you'd have hot water for the next morning and you could reset it before it even expires if you need hot water the rest of the day.

I get it, I just don't see why you can't manage it from the panel alone instead of introducing yet another device that can fail or worse! Given it's age, I would be concerned about safely.