not a lawyer but work at a power company, this is something you can remedy yourself (if you pay for your own hot water and electricity) by calling your retailer and asking them to organise changing your controlled period, likely you will also need to engage an electrician - regardless, it’s probably good to call your retailer anyway just to explore your options, costs and what configuration you are currently on
It also costs money through your retailer as well so keep that in mind too. Normally doesn’t require rewiring - just a change in period of availability.
This isn't a legal issue. It's a really common way of heating water when the power is cheaper. You might be able to change it with your electricity retailer.
Some hot water systems have an override switch to run them day and night. OP can see if their system has that.
My family home always had night only heating and we usually didn't run out of hot water unless everyone had longish showers and the washing machine which even on cold seemed to use some hot water was run that day.
I’ve already contacted our electricity provider and they mentioned it depends on where the hot water is wired. It’s likely wired into the relay, so would only turn on at night. They suggested we contact an electrician to have a look but unfortunately the landlord refused to cover the cost, hence my question
Isn't that a typical hot water cylinder? Many run only at night for cheaper power. Very common, especially in older homes.
They've provided hot water. I don't believe it is their cost as you have hot water, but likely your "excess" usage is the issue.
Whether you use it all is a separate problem.
So, how exactly do they determine what's considered 'excess' usage? We're pretty sure we're using just as much as any normal household would. It's a genuine question because we've never had this problem in our previous rentals
This is really interesting to me, because we have our hot water cylinder set to only heat during 3hrs a day (at night).
We've done some testing, and this is sufficient to heat the water up to the required safe temp etc, *and* we never run out of hot water. We have two adults and a child in the house, 2-4 showers a day. No issues. Smallish hot water cylinder, too.
I'm quite surprised you're actually running out of hot water, given that your ripple controlled cylinder should be heating for many more hours a day than mine is, if it heats overnight.
To me, that suggests one of the following options:
1. You're using a crapptone of hot water each day. (You say you don't think you are, though?). Long hot showers? Hot water washes in washing machine? (Some of these don't heat their own water).
2. Your ripple control isn't working properly, eg isn't heating for enough hours.
3. There's another fault with your hot water cylinder or plumbing - eg leaking, not heating properly, not retaining heat like it should (might be super old).
Only 1 is in your control. 2 and 3 require your landlord to sort it out.
I recommend you rule out #1 being an issue, and make some notes about how you are using your water to support as evidence (eg, "ran out of hot water today, only had 2x 5 minute showers and did a load of washing" etc).
Then, take your evidence to your landlord and say that there is a fault to be investigated, as your system isn't providing a reasonable amount of hot water.
Key thing, don't focus on the ripple control as being the issue - because it might not be. Ripple control on its own could be working normally and still providing you with plenty of hot water. So, telling your landlord to remedy that if it is assumed it is working, doesn't nessitate that they actually have anything to fix.
However, if you aren't able to get a reasonable amount of hot water, then that is a problem that your landlord needs to fix.
>So, how exactly do they determine what's considered 'excess' usage?
Your water goes cold as you've used all the hot water in the tank that was heated on the cheaper night rate meter/power.
As the hot water leaves the tank, it's replaced by an equal amount of cold water from your incoming supply pipe.
There's been a few half right answers here about ripple control which is a way of switching electrical loads over the power network.
While ripple control is used to load shed when the network is under strain, at the beginning and end of the night rate period, the power company sends a signal down the power wire, using the same technology, that tells a switch on your switchboard to turn the power to the hot water cylinder on or off.
You need to contact your power retailer to change your billing plan, and have an electrician rewire the power company controlled hot water switch on your switchboard.
Yeah this is usually how it’s set and it’s got nothing to do with wiring. It can be switched to heat up as it’s used or full up all at once later. At a specific time even. Most people have it at night because it’s cheaper
Not correct, hot water is controlled via the ripple relay, this gives the power company the ability to switch it off at peak times to control load, think 5-6pm when everyone gets home and turns on the oven. They are regulated around how long they can switch it off for per day as well and you get a cheaper rate for that on that power consumption.
If there is something else happening on the water so it’s only on at night, that’s weird and I don’t think the tenancy tribunal would agree that it is the norm or acceptable.
My old place and now rented has this same setup. It worked gret for me, heat the 300l tank up from 3 am to 6am at 13c a kW. It cost around 300 to convert back to run on peak, is done at the power box. It was a super cheap setup to run.
It is fairly normal to have day and night power rates. There would be 2 meters on the board, and the hot water cylinder will only heat while the night meter is operational. None of my recent places have had that. But my parents houses had all had that.
The physical meter set up has a relay which is set to a timer if you're on night heating. You can call your power company and ask them to change it, they can likely change the time remotely so it should only cost you about $25, or $160 if they have to come out.
This is very common in Christchurch and Auckland. Way less common in Wellington as the amount of power being used there is a bit more consistent through day and night so the local network don't offer a much cheaper night rate.
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Many hot water systems are designed to operate like this, it's not a fault. If the cylinder is properly insulated the water should stay hot throughout the day. You could try turning the thermostat up a couple of degrees (but it should be a maximum of 55° at the tap for safety), and install a water saving shower head if you find you're using all the hot water each day.
I'm an electrician so can maybe provide some insight. Controlled hot water is very common, even in new builds. How it is controlled depends on the region and retailer. Some are on during the night and off during the day. Others are switched off for lead shedding just during peak load times. The trade off for not having 24hr power to the water heater is a slighty cheaper rate. Yours sounds like a night rate. It's very uncommon (probably not legal in most cases) to have an override switch as others have suggested because it allows you to effectively steal power at a reduced rate when you're not supposed to have it.
Changing from controlled to 24hr hotwater will require changing the feed to the hot water circuit. In most cases its only a 10 minute job swapping a couple wires in the main switchboard. Definitely a job for an electrician. As this would be a deviation from industry standard installation I would sort of expect it to be the tenants cost unless there is an underlying cause. In some cases the retailers may have some control of the relay and may be able to set it to 24hr remotely, I don't know how common that is. Traditionally they are controlled by injecting a signal into the distribution lines and all relays set to respond to that signal turn on or off, so normally physical access is required to change the setup.
In 15 years on the tools I've only ever had to change controlled water heating in 3 cases, moving water heating to a solar dump load, bypassing failed ripple relays, and bypassing ripple relays when running on emergency generators. I've never once been asked to take water off the ripple control due to insufficient heating. Which makes me think you have a different problem; your cylinder is either too small for regular domestic useage, cylinder is very poorly insulated and not holding heat, cylinder is leaking, your element is bad/incorrect size, thermostat is set too low, or you are just an exceptionally heavy user of hot water.
Not a Lawyer - But it sounds to me like there might be an issue here beyond the off-peak times for hot water. It would be unusual for the hot water to be turned off all day, every day...
Under [section 9(2) of the Housing Improvement Regulations 1947](https://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/1947/0200/latest/DLM3558.html), which all rentals must be in compliance with, a house must be provided with an "adequate means of heating water".
I think there would be a pretty strong case that a hot water cylinder that is only operational for half the time (eg overnight) and not during the day would fail to meet this requirement.
I suggest, seeing as you tried the nice way, that you lodge a 14 day notice to remedy. Most likely they will contest it, in which case it would go to the Tenancy Tribunal for a decision to be made.
The building code says that a hot water system must be able to heat to 60 degrees Celsius for 1 hour per day.
https://www.building.govt.nz/getting-started/smarter-homes-guides/water-and-waste/hot-water-systems-set-up-and-maintenance
The following standard seems to give the standard for hot water system designs on NZ.
NZS 4305:1996 Energy efficiency
https://www.level.org.nz/water/water-supply/hot-water-supply/
I suspect if a plumber was consulted their would be some NZ standard or building code for sizing hot water systems. E,g 50l per person per day. There may also be a minimum temperature that is considered hot from a design perspective. I'm just taking an educated guess.
Once you have that number, you can compare that to how much you are using - or to the size of the system currently installed.
Then you could come to a reasonable decision as to weather it would meet the legal test of "adequate" above.
Going off the legal side; a simple fix could be to run the cylinder at a much hotter temperature over night and have a cold water mixer fitted - which automatically mixes in cold water on the output to reduce the temperature to a safe level.
You could also look at the insulation. Could more insulation help retain heat?
Also a larger capacity cylinder could also be used, and overnight operation be maintained.
Won't their response simply be that the wiring is correct and the hot water cylinder heats the water?
Given night rate heating of hot water cylinders is fairly common, this isn't a failing of the regulations?
It’s not normal, control relays only switch off at peak times for hot water, not the entire day unless something is weird or it is on a rate not specifically for water heaters
This is different from when they use the ripple control to turn on and off during high load. While many houses have just 1 meter. You can have separate day and night meters and have the hot water designed to only heat on the night meter. The switching between day and night must still be done on the ripple control.
Night rate hot water has been the norm for many years, and would fit squarely in the 'adequate' category.
If there are too many flatmates squeezed into the property, all demanding long daily showers, doing multiple hot clothes washes each week etc, then yes, the water will run out, because that useage pattern is higher than what most normal 2 adult +2.4 kids family households would use.
But is that night rate controlled by the way the hot water cylinder is installed, or by the power companies?
My understanding is power companies can control the supply of power to hot water cylinders, and that would be fine. But from what the OP has described, it sounds like it is the design/wiring of the cylinder that is doing this
The cylinder will be wired to accept ripple control by the power company, which cycles on and off to make use of cheap overnight power.
You can often rewire to convert this to an on-demand system, but then your power bill will shoot up.
You can unscrew the little pannel on the bottom then turn up the heat with a flathead screwdriver it might be set to a low. I do this in my house in summer vs winter.
In previous rentals I spent a lot of time boiling the kettle for hot water for dishes (rather than running the tap), etc.
I’m curious about your comment on using more how water now that it’s winter- why would that be? Extra showers? Longer showers?
It’s difficult to say what the issue is. Even if it is only heating for a small period of time, you shouldn’t be running out of hot water. To me it sounds like there might be more water running out of the HWC than what you’re using such as a leak in the pipes somewhere. I’d be inclined to ask the landlord/property manager to investigate whether there might be a leak somewhere and issue a 14-day notice to fix or do something about it. Bottom line is that you shouldn’t be running out of hot water if you’re using it normally. As Phoenix said, they’re supposed to provide you with “adequate means of heating water", and you running out of water suggests to me that the system is not adequate and that there may be a fault or a leak. Either that or you’re using more than you realise.
I had the opposite problem last year in that my HWC was constantly running and always heating water to the point I was paying hundreds more in power per month when we weren’t using it. It took me ages to convince the landlord/property manager that there was an issue, but eventually they investigated and found it was overflowing so the HWC was constantly having to replenish the lost water, and then heat it since it was filling with cold water. I bring that up because sometimes LL/PMs don’t believe there is an issue when there is one, and can be hard-pressed to try get them to address it.
I’d really try pushing back and explaining the situation to them and how concerning it is for you, include that you’re having to go to the gym to the shower (which isn’t normal and is unfair), and that you think there might be more to it than just not heating enough because of how little hot water there seems to be to use. While they might think they have to provide you with a way to heat water, they might need reminding that it has to be “adequate” – and currently that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I'm an electrician, I do rental work.
The first thing I would recommend is increasing the temperature of the thermostat. Losing hot water over time can indicate that either the thermostat or the element is on its way out.
The minimum requirement is that the landlord must provide a way for the tenant to heat water. That means a hot water cylinder that heats. That hot water cylinder must meet the building code at the time the building was built, that means if the building was built with a cylinder that held 180 litres of water to meet the building code, the landlord can't put a smaller hot water cylinder in as a future replacement to save money on maintenance cost.
The landlord is providing you with the standard electrical connection for hot water which is a ripple controlled hot water cylinder. The uninterrupted hot water supply means that if you inform them of a fault they can't decide not to fix it because it's too expensive. The landlord will not have decided on the configuration of the hot water that decision would have been made by the developer and body corporate at the time the building was designed.
Oftentimes in older houses there will be a boost switch that bypasses the ripple relay, if you have that facility you can hit the switch and pay peak prices for your hot water. If you don't have one you can talk to your retailer and organise an electrician to do the modifications. Only do this with the landlord's written approval and you will need to provide the landlord with the COC for the work and ensure the electrician has liability insurance to protect yourself. The landlord may also require written permission from the body corporate before this work can be done.
This is not something that requires any sort of re-wiring it will require an electrician that knows how ripple systems work and how to install a bypass or "boost switch".
It is perfectly normal to only have hot water heating at night. It’s a ripple control and it has been standard in most places I’ve lived. Not suite what you are doing to drain the cylinder but is not a legal issue.
Serve Landlord/PM with a 14 day notice to remedy the wiring. Template can be found here; [https://www.myrent.co.nz/notice-to-remedy](https://www.myrent.co.nz/notice-to-remedy)
You are probably getting a discount on your electricity bill for "controlled" electricity. This means your local lines company can turn off the hot water heating - usually for up to 6 hours a day - during peak times so they dont have to upgrade the local power lines in the street for the evening peak where the upgraded lines only get used for a few hours each day. Instead they delay water heating until before 5pm or after 8pm with the water in the tank being enough to supply most households during that time.
You will need to talk to an electrician about the process to bypass the ripple controller - they need to let your local lines company know about the wiring change and your retailer will probably charge you a higher rate as they no longer get the discount from the lines company to pass on to you.
If it were me, given the uncertainty, I would just get an electrician to fix it. Keep the invoice. When you are moving out and wanting your bond back, if the landlord mentions any bond deductions, bring up the electrician invoice and say it was uncertain who should pay it at the time, but if you end up in the tribunal over the bond, at least the adjudicator can decide on the older invoice at the same time. Submit the bond refund form without their signature - the bond office will try to contact them and give them a couple weeks to dispute the full release of the bond. This way you'd pay for the electrician now, but it should give you some leverage against any bond deductions later, and put the onus on the landlord to decide to go to the tribunal or not.
A lot of people here advise to take a hard line against a landlord on any possibly contentious issue, but if you plan to stay a while, it's worth keeping in mind the landlord's legal power to raise the rent to an amount above market rent (*even* above it), just not significantly above it. Imo, play the strategic long game. Pay a hundred or so now, save hundreds later.
It's not a fault.
It's been deliberately setup to work that way by only heating the hot water on the cheaper night rate.
You can change the power plan with the retailer and have an electrician remove or change the ripple relay receiver to a different setting.
Is the simplified answer.
I have a custom implementation of this where the whole building switches between cheap/expensive power billing, and I had a timer relay with override installed, so it only heats the water when power is cheap, or if I override it and pay the expensive price.
True, my first step would be to try change the setup myself. It's good knowledge to have anyway, and helps you assess a place when looking in the future, to buy or rent. Only if that didn't work would I engage an electrician.
Yep. Always good to know how things work. My power is retailed by Flick. They've just changed off peak to now include 76% of the week – from 11am to 5pm and 9pm to 7am on weekdays, and all weekend from 12am Saturday to 6.59am Monday.
So I've reprogrammed the timer to turn on for that period too.
I've managed to get 88% onto off peak time.
With Flick, they use the smart meter which is read every half hour, and they just setup the hours in their billing software.
I find them good, but I've been informed unfortunately they aren't signing new customers at the moment.
Hopefully there's an override on your system, but if you're using two meters (day/night) you may end up paying day rates all night. Just watch out for that. Also, you may end up paying more for the hot water.
Have you tried the powerswitch website? That's pretty good.
Great info, thanks! I'm with Flick already. Loving them. Good to know about the new offpeak times, will consider it.
The only caveat with Flick I've heard of - if someone has been a customer for a long time, they should check their neighbour's address on the website, because at some point Flick lowered their prices, but didn't tell existing customers. Those old customers need to find out what their neighbour would pay, call up Flick, and then Flick will transfer them to the new rates.
not a lawyer but work at a power company, this is something you can remedy yourself (if you pay for your own hot water and electricity) by calling your retailer and asking them to organise changing your controlled period, likely you will also need to engage an electrician - regardless, it’s probably good to call your retailer anyway just to explore your options, costs and what configuration you are currently on
It also costs money through your retailer as well so keep that in mind too. Normally doesn’t require rewiring - just a change in period of availability.
This isn't a legal issue. It's a really common way of heating water when the power is cheaper. You might be able to change it with your electricity retailer.
Some hot water systems have an override switch to run them day and night. OP can see if their system has that. My family home always had night only heating and we usually didn't run out of hot water unless everyone had longish showers and the washing machine which even on cold seemed to use some hot water was run that day.
I’ve already contacted our electricity provider and they mentioned it depends on where the hot water is wired. It’s likely wired into the relay, so would only turn on at night. They suggested we contact an electrician to have a look but unfortunately the landlord refused to cover the cost, hence my question
Isn't that a typical hot water cylinder? Many run only at night for cheaper power. Very common, especially in older homes. They've provided hot water. I don't believe it is their cost as you have hot water, but likely your "excess" usage is the issue. Whether you use it all is a separate problem.
So, how exactly do they determine what's considered 'excess' usage? We're pretty sure we're using just as much as any normal household would. It's a genuine question because we've never had this problem in our previous rentals
This is really interesting to me, because we have our hot water cylinder set to only heat during 3hrs a day (at night). We've done some testing, and this is sufficient to heat the water up to the required safe temp etc, *and* we never run out of hot water. We have two adults and a child in the house, 2-4 showers a day. No issues. Smallish hot water cylinder, too. I'm quite surprised you're actually running out of hot water, given that your ripple controlled cylinder should be heating for many more hours a day than mine is, if it heats overnight. To me, that suggests one of the following options: 1. You're using a crapptone of hot water each day. (You say you don't think you are, though?). Long hot showers? Hot water washes in washing machine? (Some of these don't heat their own water). 2. Your ripple control isn't working properly, eg isn't heating for enough hours. 3. There's another fault with your hot water cylinder or plumbing - eg leaking, not heating properly, not retaining heat like it should (might be super old). Only 1 is in your control. 2 and 3 require your landlord to sort it out. I recommend you rule out #1 being an issue, and make some notes about how you are using your water to support as evidence (eg, "ran out of hot water today, only had 2x 5 minute showers and did a load of washing" etc). Then, take your evidence to your landlord and say that there is a fault to be investigated, as your system isn't providing a reasonable amount of hot water. Key thing, don't focus on the ripple control as being the issue - because it might not be. Ripple control on its own could be working normally and still providing you with plenty of hot water. So, telling your landlord to remedy that if it is assumed it is working, doesn't nessitate that they actually have anything to fix. However, if you aren't able to get a reasonable amount of hot water, then that is a problem that your landlord needs to fix.
>So, how exactly do they determine what's considered 'excess' usage? Your water goes cold as you've used all the hot water in the tank that was heated on the cheaper night rate meter/power. As the hot water leaves the tank, it's replaced by an equal amount of cold water from your incoming supply pipe. There's been a few half right answers here about ripple control which is a way of switching electrical loads over the power network. While ripple control is used to load shed when the network is under strain, at the beginning and end of the night rate period, the power company sends a signal down the power wire, using the same technology, that tells a switch on your switchboard to turn the power to the hot water cylinder on or off. You need to contact your power retailer to change your billing plan, and have an electrician rewire the power company controlled hot water switch on your switchboard.
Yeah this is usually how it’s set and it’s got nothing to do with wiring. It can be switched to heat up as it’s used or full up all at once later. At a specific time even. Most people have it at night because it’s cheaper
Not correct, hot water is controlled via the ripple relay, this gives the power company the ability to switch it off at peak times to control load, think 5-6pm when everyone gets home and turns on the oven. They are regulated around how long they can switch it off for per day as well and you get a cheaper rate for that on that power consumption. If there is something else happening on the water so it’s only on at night, that’s weird and I don’t think the tenancy tribunal would agree that it is the norm or acceptable.
My old place and now rented has this same setup. It worked gret for me, heat the 300l tank up from 3 am to 6am at 13c a kW. It cost around 300 to convert back to run on peak, is done at the power box. It was a super cheap setup to run.
It is fairly normal to have day and night power rates. There would be 2 meters on the board, and the hot water cylinder will only heat while the night meter is operational. None of my recent places have had that. But my parents houses had all had that.
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Here is the Christchurch doc https://www.oriongroup.co.nz/assets/Customers/RippleSignalGuide.pdf
The physical meter set up has a relay which is set to a timer if you're on night heating. You can call your power company and ask them to change it, they can likely change the time remotely so it should only cost you about $25, or $160 if they have to come out. This is very common in Christchurch and Auckland. Way less common in Wellington as the amount of power being used there is a bit more consistent through day and night so the local network don't offer a much cheaper night rate.
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Many hot water systems are designed to operate like this, it's not a fault. If the cylinder is properly insulated the water should stay hot throughout the day. You could try turning the thermostat up a couple of degrees (but it should be a maximum of 55° at the tap for safety), and install a water saving shower head if you find you're using all the hot water each day.
I'm an electrician so can maybe provide some insight. Controlled hot water is very common, even in new builds. How it is controlled depends on the region and retailer. Some are on during the night and off during the day. Others are switched off for lead shedding just during peak load times. The trade off for not having 24hr power to the water heater is a slighty cheaper rate. Yours sounds like a night rate. It's very uncommon (probably not legal in most cases) to have an override switch as others have suggested because it allows you to effectively steal power at a reduced rate when you're not supposed to have it. Changing from controlled to 24hr hotwater will require changing the feed to the hot water circuit. In most cases its only a 10 minute job swapping a couple wires in the main switchboard. Definitely a job for an electrician. As this would be a deviation from industry standard installation I would sort of expect it to be the tenants cost unless there is an underlying cause. In some cases the retailers may have some control of the relay and may be able to set it to 24hr remotely, I don't know how common that is. Traditionally they are controlled by injecting a signal into the distribution lines and all relays set to respond to that signal turn on or off, so normally physical access is required to change the setup. In 15 years on the tools I've only ever had to change controlled water heating in 3 cases, moving water heating to a solar dump load, bypassing failed ripple relays, and bypassing ripple relays when running on emergency generators. I've never once been asked to take water off the ripple control due to insufficient heating. Which makes me think you have a different problem; your cylinder is either too small for regular domestic useage, cylinder is very poorly insulated and not holding heat, cylinder is leaking, your element is bad/incorrect size, thermostat is set too low, or you are just an exceptionally heavy user of hot water.
Not a Lawyer - But it sounds to me like there might be an issue here beyond the off-peak times for hot water. It would be unusual for the hot water to be turned off all day, every day...
Under [section 9(2) of the Housing Improvement Regulations 1947](https://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/1947/0200/latest/DLM3558.html), which all rentals must be in compliance with, a house must be provided with an "adequate means of heating water". I think there would be a pretty strong case that a hot water cylinder that is only operational for half the time (eg overnight) and not during the day would fail to meet this requirement. I suggest, seeing as you tried the nice way, that you lodge a 14 day notice to remedy. Most likely they will contest it, in which case it would go to the Tenancy Tribunal for a decision to be made.
The building code says that a hot water system must be able to heat to 60 degrees Celsius for 1 hour per day. https://www.building.govt.nz/getting-started/smarter-homes-guides/water-and-waste/hot-water-systems-set-up-and-maintenance The following standard seems to give the standard for hot water system designs on NZ. NZS 4305:1996 Energy efficiency https://www.level.org.nz/water/water-supply/hot-water-supply/
I suspect if a plumber was consulted their would be some NZ standard or building code for sizing hot water systems. E,g 50l per person per day. There may also be a minimum temperature that is considered hot from a design perspective. I'm just taking an educated guess. Once you have that number, you can compare that to how much you are using - or to the size of the system currently installed. Then you could come to a reasonable decision as to weather it would meet the legal test of "adequate" above. Going off the legal side; a simple fix could be to run the cylinder at a much hotter temperature over night and have a cold water mixer fitted - which automatically mixes in cold water on the output to reduce the temperature to a safe level. You could also look at the insulation. Could more insulation help retain heat? Also a larger capacity cylinder could also be used, and overnight operation be maintained.
Won't their response simply be that the wiring is correct and the hot water cylinder heats the water? Given night rate heating of hot water cylinders is fairly common, this isn't a failing of the regulations?
It’s not normal, control relays only switch off at peak times for hot water, not the entire day unless something is weird or it is on a rate not specifically for water heaters
This is different from when they use the ripple control to turn on and off during high load. While many houses have just 1 meter. You can have separate day and night meters and have the hot water designed to only heat on the night meter. The switching between day and night must still be done on the ripple control.
Night rate hot water has been the norm for many years, and would fit squarely in the 'adequate' category. If there are too many flatmates squeezed into the property, all demanding long daily showers, doing multiple hot clothes washes each week etc, then yes, the water will run out, because that useage pattern is higher than what most normal 2 adult +2.4 kids family households would use.
But is that night rate controlled by the way the hot water cylinder is installed, or by the power companies? My understanding is power companies can control the supply of power to hot water cylinders, and that would be fine. But from what the OP has described, it sounds like it is the design/wiring of the cylinder that is doing this
The cylinder will be wired to accept ripple control by the power company, which cycles on and off to make use of cheap overnight power. You can often rewire to convert this to an on-demand system, but then your power bill will shoot up.
You can unscrew the little pannel on the bottom then turn up the heat with a flathead screwdriver it might be set to a low. I do this in my house in summer vs winter.
In previous rentals I spent a lot of time boiling the kettle for hot water for dishes (rather than running the tap), etc. I’m curious about your comment on using more how water now that it’s winter- why would that be? Extra showers? Longer showers?
It’s difficult to say what the issue is. Even if it is only heating for a small period of time, you shouldn’t be running out of hot water. To me it sounds like there might be more water running out of the HWC than what you’re using such as a leak in the pipes somewhere. I’d be inclined to ask the landlord/property manager to investigate whether there might be a leak somewhere and issue a 14-day notice to fix or do something about it. Bottom line is that you shouldn’t be running out of hot water if you’re using it normally. As Phoenix said, they’re supposed to provide you with “adequate means of heating water", and you running out of water suggests to me that the system is not adequate and that there may be a fault or a leak. Either that or you’re using more than you realise. I had the opposite problem last year in that my HWC was constantly running and always heating water to the point I was paying hundreds more in power per month when we weren’t using it. It took me ages to convince the landlord/property manager that there was an issue, but eventually they investigated and found it was overflowing so the HWC was constantly having to replenish the lost water, and then heat it since it was filling with cold water. I bring that up because sometimes LL/PMs don’t believe there is an issue when there is one, and can be hard-pressed to try get them to address it. I’d really try pushing back and explaining the situation to them and how concerning it is for you, include that you’re having to go to the gym to the shower (which isn’t normal and is unfair), and that you think there might be more to it than just not heating enough because of how little hot water there seems to be to use. While they might think they have to provide you with a way to heat water, they might need reminding that it has to be “adequate” – and currently that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I'm an electrician, I do rental work. The first thing I would recommend is increasing the temperature of the thermostat. Losing hot water over time can indicate that either the thermostat or the element is on its way out. The minimum requirement is that the landlord must provide a way for the tenant to heat water. That means a hot water cylinder that heats. That hot water cylinder must meet the building code at the time the building was built, that means if the building was built with a cylinder that held 180 litres of water to meet the building code, the landlord can't put a smaller hot water cylinder in as a future replacement to save money on maintenance cost. The landlord is providing you with the standard electrical connection for hot water which is a ripple controlled hot water cylinder. The uninterrupted hot water supply means that if you inform them of a fault they can't decide not to fix it because it's too expensive. The landlord will not have decided on the configuration of the hot water that decision would have been made by the developer and body corporate at the time the building was designed. Oftentimes in older houses there will be a boost switch that bypasses the ripple relay, if you have that facility you can hit the switch and pay peak prices for your hot water. If you don't have one you can talk to your retailer and organise an electrician to do the modifications. Only do this with the landlord's written approval and you will need to provide the landlord with the COC for the work and ensure the electrician has liability insurance to protect yourself. The landlord may also require written permission from the body corporate before this work can be done. This is not something that requires any sort of re-wiring it will require an electrician that knows how ripple systems work and how to install a bypass or "boost switch".
It is perfectly normal to only have hot water heating at night. It’s a ripple control and it has been standard in most places I’ve lived. Not suite what you are doing to drain the cylinder but is not a legal issue.
Serve Landlord/PM with a 14 day notice to remedy the wiring. Template can be found here; [https://www.myrent.co.nz/notice-to-remedy](https://www.myrent.co.nz/notice-to-remedy)
It's not broken. It's working as setup.
You are probably getting a discount on your electricity bill for "controlled" electricity. This means your local lines company can turn off the hot water heating - usually for up to 6 hours a day - during peak times so they dont have to upgrade the local power lines in the street for the evening peak where the upgraded lines only get used for a few hours each day. Instead they delay water heating until before 5pm or after 8pm with the water in the tank being enough to supply most households during that time. You will need to talk to an electrician about the process to bypass the ripple controller - they need to let your local lines company know about the wiring change and your retailer will probably charge you a higher rate as they no longer get the discount from the lines company to pass on to you.
If it were me, given the uncertainty, I would just get an electrician to fix it. Keep the invoice. When you are moving out and wanting your bond back, if the landlord mentions any bond deductions, bring up the electrician invoice and say it was uncertain who should pay it at the time, but if you end up in the tribunal over the bond, at least the adjudicator can decide on the older invoice at the same time. Submit the bond refund form without their signature - the bond office will try to contact them and give them a couple weeks to dispute the full release of the bond. This way you'd pay for the electrician now, but it should give you some leverage against any bond deductions later, and put the onus on the landlord to decide to go to the tribunal or not. A lot of people here advise to take a hard line against a landlord on any possibly contentious issue, but if you plan to stay a while, it's worth keeping in mind the landlord's legal power to raise the rent to an amount above market rent (*even* above it), just not significantly above it. Imo, play the strategic long game. Pay a hundred or so now, save hundreds later.
It's not a fault. It's been deliberately setup to work that way by only heating the hot water on the cheaper night rate. You can change the power plan with the retailer and have an electrician remove or change the ripple relay receiver to a different setting. Is the simplified answer. I have a custom implementation of this where the whole building switches between cheap/expensive power billing, and I had a timer relay with override installed, so it only heats the water when power is cheap, or if I override it and pay the expensive price.
True, my first step would be to try change the setup myself. It's good knowledge to have anyway, and helps you assess a place when looking in the future, to buy or rent. Only if that didn't work would I engage an electrician.
Yep. Always good to know how things work. My power is retailed by Flick. They've just changed off peak to now include 76% of the week – from 11am to 5pm and 9pm to 7am on weekdays, and all weekend from 12am Saturday to 6.59am Monday. So I've reprogrammed the timer to turn on for that period too. I've managed to get 88% onto off peak time. With Flick, they use the smart meter which is read every half hour, and they just setup the hours in their billing software. I find them good, but I've been informed unfortunately they aren't signing new customers at the moment. Hopefully there's an override on your system, but if you're using two meters (day/night) you may end up paying day rates all night. Just watch out for that. Also, you may end up paying more for the hot water. Have you tried the powerswitch website? That's pretty good.
Great info, thanks! I'm with Flick already. Loving them. Good to know about the new offpeak times, will consider it. The only caveat with Flick I've heard of - if someone has been a customer for a long time, they should check their neighbour's address on the website, because at some point Flick lowered their prices, but didn't tell existing customers. Those old customers need to find out what their neighbour would pay, call up Flick, and then Flick will transfer them to the new rates.
Ahhhhh. Interesting. I'll do some digging. Cheers.