It is unusual to not have access to natural gas in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs. However, there is a small pocket in Wattle Park where they have no mains water or sewer connections. Throughout St Georges the streets have underground piped natural gas infrastructure available to them. Majority of homes are connected to natural gas for either cooking, heating, or hot water.
St Georges is an affluent suburb located in Adelaide’s east and is bordered by Portrush Road, Highfield Avenue, Wootoona Terrace and Sunnyside Road. The council called Burnside is where St Georges is located and is in post code district 5064. Surrounding suburbs to St Georges are Glen Osmond, Linden Park, Beaumont, Hazelwood Park, and Glenunga. The suburb itself is mostly residential. The St Georges Bakehouse in Linden Park is another favourite with our plumbers for smoko and lunch.
No hot water call out Saturday morning – Hot water plumbers
We recently received a phone call last Saturday morning from a customer reporting no hot water and that the water inside there Thermann storage hot water tank had been gradually getting cooler over the past few days. Fortunately, we were able to get one of our licensed plumbers to the home in St Georges within the hour and assess the situation.
Electric storage mains pressure hot water services will often be powered by J tariff electricity or otherwise known as Off Peak power. If the electrical meter has not been upgraded recently this can cause a fault with the power supply to the hot water service and SA Power Networks will need to be contacted.
If the older style analogue time clock is still in use, then it will be upgraded to a modern digital electrical meter. The advantage of having a digital meter is that off peak electricity can be provided at various times of the day not just at night and the owners can get frequent updates on their electrical usage.
In this scenario our customer had recently had natural gas put onto their property for there recent kitchen renovation. The provision had been left for future gas to a continuous flow water heater system when the time came. Like many of the homes in St Georges they are quite large and have multiple bathrooms. We had no options but to install a Rheem 26 litre instant gas water heater. Luckily Tradelink are open till 12pm on a Saturday so we still had time to get a unit from them and then spend time onsite changing the plumbing and gas pipes over to suit this new arrangement.
In situations such as this we can also offer temporary hot water systems for the weekend if a new system cannot be sourced in time giving the customers enough hot water to get them through the weekend.
Supply and Demand of new hot water services in Adelaide
Since the start of Covid hot water services have gone up significantly. In most cases over the last 3 years, we have seen around a 25% increase on all hot water services from all manufacturers.
Supply is still not back to its full capacity and is not expected to be for at least another 12 months. Typically, we will use brands such as Rheem, Rinnai, Thermann and Vulcan for our hot water installations. If a hot water service is to be repaired, we try use genuine parts where possible to maintain manufacturer’s warranty policies.
It seems to have been a world-wide issue since covid that everything has gone up in price and will never come back down. Fortunately for us being a small locally owned and operated plumbing business in Adelaide our overheads are not as high as other interstate companies, so we haven’t had to raise our costs as much as others say they need to. It is for this reason Mayfair Plumbing should be your number 1 go to for all plumbing related issues in St Georges and surrounding locations of Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills.