Is it safe to bypass thermal switch on gas water heater?
It looks like my 10+ year old hot water heater had a faulty control unit and/or thermal switch. I couldn't get the pilot light to stay lit after releasing the red button. I bought a new control unit at Lowe's that was made for a Whirlpool, but I was told was universal. It looks identical to my old one except it has 2 wires coming out of it that are suppose to hook up to the thermal switch on a whirlpool. My water heater is an American Water Heater Proline model and doesn't have that thermal switch, at least I can't find it if there is one. I looked on my original control unit and it does have those wires, however they go directly into the hole where the thermocoupler screws into. I tried just leaving those wires on the new unit disconnected but I still couldn't get the pilot to stay lit. However, once I connected them in a wirenut the pilot stayed lit and I was able to light the burner. Is it ok to just leave them connected and not use a thermal switch or is that a bad idea? Thanks You are bypassing a safety feature designed into the water heater. This is a redundant safety feature. The basic idea is to prevent a water heater explosion if the gas valves sticks with the burner on. So for an actual hazard to exist, the valve has to stick on and the pressure and temperature relief valve has to fail to open to vent off overheated water. Then the PT valve also has to fail to open to vent off excessive water pressure that developes when the water in the tank boils. If that happens and you've disconnected the safety shutoff, you should expect the water heater to explode as the water pressure increases as far as needed to cause that explosion. If you want to accept that risk, I suppose it's up to you. I'm not quite sure what your insurance company might do if your house is wrecked and an investigation notes that the safety system was bypassed. But perhaps you wont be around to have to worry about that. How much safety is enough is the question you should ask yourself. In this case, you get to choose. If you haven't seen the Mythbusters episode on water heaters, it's highly instructive. YouTube - Mythbusters water heater Yikes. Well I definitely do NOT want to disable any safety features. I didn't know what that switch was for, glad I asked. So what are my options? Is there any way I can wire in some sort of aftermarket thermal switch? Thanks for the info by the way! I think there may be some confusion. If your old control unit (which I'm not even sure what that is) had no thermal switch, or if it did but had no connection...then defeating the one thats on the replacement is no less safe than what you had. Of course the confusion could be completely on my part....lol. Could you post the actual model number and serial number. AWH has a pretty good website for both info and parts.
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