Did you dream about a hot shower this morning only to find there was no hot water? Or maybe you were looking to hand-wash a dish, but the water never heated up enough to get the grime off your plates.
Sometimes, water heaters—gas or electric, tank or tankless—stop working as they should, including Reliance-branded heaters. Fortunately, there is a potential fix—but it depends on what type of Reliance water heater you have.
Reliance electric water heaters should come with a reset button on the thermostat. However, the gas and tankless types do not. Fortunately, you can still perform a hard reset on any Reliance heater by cutting off power temporarily.
In this post, you’ll find the locations of reset buttons in Reliance heaters and how to perform a hard reset if they don’t have one or if a thermostat reset fails.
Reliance Water Heater Reset Button Location
Because the thermostat regulates the temperature your hot water heater reaches, an incorrect setting or other malfunction in the thermostat can interfere with hot water output. Many water heaters come with a resettable thermostat, including some Reliance ones.
But not every Reliance hot water heater comes with a reset button on the thermostat. While you can press a reset button on the electric storage heaters, you won’t find one on the gas storage or tankless water heaters.
Reliance Electric Storage Water Heater Reset Button
Reliance’s electric storage heaters have a bright red reset button on top of the upper thermostat.
You can locate the thermostat beneath a small panel toward the top or middle of the heater. Just remove the screw holding it in place and pull out the pieces of insulation underneath. From there, you can press the reset button.
Reliance Gas Storage Water Heater Reset Button
Unlike their electric counterparts, Reliance gas water heaters don’t come with a reset switch or button on the thermostat. However, they do have a resettable gas valve controller.
The gas valve regulates gas flow to the pilot light. If it’s malfunctioning in some way, your heater won’t get the fuel it needs to heat up water.
The gas valve controller comes with a dial and water temperature settings.
To reset this valve:
Locate the controller on the side of the tank.
Locate the temperature dial.
Turn the dial to the Very Hot setting and leave it for 10 seconds.
Turn the dial to Hot for another 10 seconds.
Twist the dial to Pilot for 10 more seconds.
After following this process, your controller should be reset.
This brand’s tankless heaters come with a non-resettable thermostat. Because of that, you’ll need to turn to a hard reset instead. Just follow the steps in the section below.
How Else Can I Reset My Reliance Water Heater?
You may feel like you’re out of luck without a reset button to press. Or you may have tried resetting the thermostat and it just didn’t do much, which can occur with a faulty thermostat or when the heating problem originates elsewhere in the machine.
Before pulling apart your hot water heater to inspect it, consider performing a hard reset.
To perform a hard reset, turn off the power supply for at least 30 seconds. This means either unplugging your device from the outlet or turning off the switch to your heater on your circuit breaker.
After waiting at least half a minute, you can plug it back in or turn the breaker back on and check whether it produces hot water again.
What Else Can I Do to Fix My Reliance Water Heater?
Beyond a reset, you can try some do-it-yourself fixes before calling in a service technician.
First, you can try checking the pipes and inlet valves for mineral buildup, also called scaling—primarily if you use a hard water supply. You can flush out mineral deposits using white vinegar.
You can also check components like the thermal fuse, heating element, and thermostat for continuity. Replace a bad thermostat or other heating component if there’s no continuity.
Finally, consider the capacity of your heater. If you tend to run multiple taps at once, your heater might be unable to keep up. To address this, you can either reduce the number of fixtures you run at once or upgrade to a heater with a higher capacity.
Conclusion
Whether or not your Reliance water heater has a resettable thermostat depends on what type you have. Their electric storage heaters come with one, but their gas-powered and tankless water heaters don’t.
However, if you have a gas-powered water heater, you may be able to reset the gas valve controller. And you can perform a hard reset on most appliances by cutting the power supply for 30 seconds or so.
Don’t hesitate to try some DIY inspections or call in a technician if a reset fails to fix your heater.
