Hi everyone,
I moved into my new ppor on Saturday, a 2 bedroom unit with storage room downstairs. We went to use the hot water and it didn’t work, went to the fuse box and flicked the switch back on. A few hours later it still didn’t work, we had a look and it had blown, we bought a new one which blew up straight away. We are not sure where to go from here, energy autralia said it sounds like a problem with the hot water system itself. We are not sure where to go from here, both with regards to getting hot water and also getting the previous owners to pay for it. Any suggestions?
Thank you in advance.
Zac
Get an electrician to check the wiring.
The best electricians I find are in the local paper and they like doing small jobs where as yellow pages electrician are too busy to look at a small job
I had a light doing this and it was found to be rats had eaten the power cable between the light switch and the light in the actual wall. Rats seem to like and are attracted to wires with electricity in them. You may be able to look in the ceiling and follow the wiring to see if there is a dead rat attached to the hot water wiring. (This could have happened during house vacancy and throwing rat poison packs in the ceiling prevents this happening again)
Another house I had a similar occurrence and the roof was leaking water onto the electrical terminals of a light which then blew the fuse intermittently when it rained.
Otherwise it will be the element but the element usually goes open circuit rather than short circuiting either way an electrician will most likely have to fix it.Hi zac
I agree with duckster, Im a sparkie and your problem is easily fixed. Hot water systems if they are electric usually only have 3
problem areas , the element, thermostat or cabling to the unit. Either way a sparkie out of the local paper will be able to fix it
quickly.mpjt
Another option is to install a heat pump replacement hot water system.
which has a federal gov rebate of $1000 towards the cost of installation.Worst case scenario, it could be a leak which is shorting out the power, new hws – had this recently. Unfortunately, there is no way of getting the previous owner to pay anything towards the cost of repair or replacement – this comes down to your due diligence. If you had picked it up before you made an offer/during building inspection you could negotiate. If you picked it up on Friday last (assuming it was working when the building inspection was done), you could have refused to settle until it was fixed. You have now taken possession, either get used to cold showers or get it fixed, either way it is up to yourself.
got it fixed guys, something in the hot water system had blown. got a guy to fix it yesterday, thanks for the advice.
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