water heater element

[Mr. Wizard]

Is there someway I can use a multimeter to see if an element is good? A 4500 Watt element

[LMITOUT]

It should read some resistance value if good. Flip to your "ohm" setting on your multimeter and put a lead on each contact of the element and see if it shows anything or if it blinks, error, etc. Remove the electric wires to the element first of course.

I had one go bad and put the multimeter on it for the heck of it and it proved it was bad, even though I already knew because I had no hot water!

[BobT]

Like LMITOUT has said, be sure to turn off the power and disconnect one of the wires before you test. If there's still power on you can seriously damage your meter and possibly yourself. If you don't disconnect the wire, you may not read an open circuit if the heater is bad because the meter may be reading through another part of the circuit.

[Tom7227]

Do you have to let the water out of the tank? Will the meter read accurately with water or isn't there enough to complete the circuit?

[BobT]

The outer part of the element is not the conductor so having water in the tank shouldn't matter. If the outer part of the heater tube was conducting electricity or if the heating element was shorted to the tube your entire water system would become energized, which would be an extremely dangerous situation. In this case, you should be tripping your circuit breaker.