House came with an ncient water heater that struggled but worked well enough until a leak and some other issues caused me to burn out one or both elements. The labels in the box were wrong so I drained the tank and found everything was still live. Is it too difficult to throw on a 'has power' indicator light? Anyway.
Time to replace it. I turned off the double for the water heater and I'm still waiting to see what is turned off by it. I also found that a pair of single breakers that when either one were off showed that the lines to the water heater were no longer hot. What? That cannot be right and I'm sure there's some reasonable danger involved for not just hooking it up properly.
Is the obvious fix of putting it back on the double breaker labeled for it really that simple? Or in case its actually hooked up to something else, replacing those two singles with a double?
Someone with some brains tell me I'm not going crazy.
Best Answer
You can replace the two single pole breakers with a 30A double pole, or use an appropriately identified handle tie between the existing single pole breakers as well as per 240.15(B)(2) as typical electric storage water heaters don't have any 120V loads. Of course, this all requires the breakers to be adjacent.