Originally Posted By: rray This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Most water heaters (if not all) have an inner cover and an outer cover for the burner chamber. How hot should the outer cover be? Not hot? Warm but easy to remove with bare hands? Too hot to remove without using gloves? What’s the purpose of the two covers? Who’s the idiot that designed them to be so difficult to remove? Why can’t some mechanical engineer design something better? Margarita time.
Originally Posted By: jmcginnis This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Ok Russel, I’ll give this a shot… I guess it would partly depend on the quality of the product… ie. the amount of insulation between the jackets…if we are talking about the water tank itself… the burner chamber is a different story since it is usually accessible from the front by removing the cover plate over the burners… that part gets extremely hot… as far as engineers and design…don’t get me started… I was in the commercial food equipment business for many years and came to realize that engineers do not design equipment with service in mind… in fact, one company whose equipment I serviced actually built there machine on the assembly line, up-side down for ease of assembly… but of course when I went on the job site the equipment was always installed right side up… damn near impossible to get at certain parts …
Originally Posted By: jfarsetta This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Russel,
If the burner has been on for any length of time, you're gonna burn your friggin' fingers, dude! Shut that puppy down and wait 5 minutes! What's the rush? After all, some of us advertise that we check more than 1600 individual items on an inspection, so we've got all the time in the world (right)... I gotta burn my fingers at least once a week... Just stupid on my part, I guess. Its just that my welders gloves are go bulky!
As to a better design, there IS a water heater with a sliding door. Yup, disappears from left to right. Still gets hot, though, but at least you dont look like an idiot trying to figure out how to get it out or back on...
Originally Posted By: rray This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I’ve only seen one water heater with the sliding door. I sure did like it.
So both the inner cover and the outer cover get hot enough to burn? No surprise about the inner cover, but considering how low the burner chamber is (just right for the inquisitive hands of a 2-year-old), it just seems like some of the outer covers are so hot that something should be done. If I can burn my ol' hands, I can only imagine what could happen to the little child playing in the garage.
But I guess nothing like that has ever happened. Otherwise the personal injury lawyers would be all over it, and the water heater companies would then re-design the water heater after the 2-year-old prodigy pianist could no longer play the piano.