Tenant demands

[fullom]

What can a tenant reasonably demand ? One of my tennants has said that the hotwater cylinder is not providing enough hotwater for the whole house and wants me the landlord to rectify it. I know that that hotwater cylinder provides enough water because I lived in the house with four people (the amount that now live in the house). My initial reaction was to say take shorter showers but do I have an obligation as a landlord to rectify something thats not broken ??

He has a similar complaint with the hotwater in the kitchen that is heated by an independent Zip water type heater.

[Gatekeeper]

Have you told him to try turning up the thermostat on the HWC, it sure helps it go a lot further. Just a thought

[fullom]

yeah I have-going to see what result that brings though

[Dean@Massiveaction]

You would need to check that the cylinder is working properly. If it is then it's the tenants issue

[drelly]

Suggest a significant rent increase to pay for his personal needs

[whitt]

As I live in a area of Auckland which utilises tank water I think I will have a go at this.

With regards water tanks the Residential tenancy act requires sufficent water storage for a dwelling. They then go on to suggest a 5,000 gallon tank would be ok and the tenant is then responsible for water use above this.

The hot water cylinder would be a similar thing. Check the storage size is ok normally around 180 litre for a standard house.
There are however a few things to check before you can shift responsibility to the tenant.
-Check the Relief valve is not leaking. There may be a releif lever that needs operating regularly on the HWC. The outlet pipe on older houses vents to outside of house. It is OK to have a slight drip from these but not continuous flow all the time.
-Check the cylinder is heating up to temp. The element or thermostat may be playing up and not heating HWC correctly.
-Dripping hot water taps can use up water.
Next if all is fine and no leaks
-Have a look at the showerhead consumption. Place a 9litre bucket under head and calculate how long it takes to fill. Convert to litres per minutes. if it is in the region of 20 LPM that is too high and can be safely reduced. Talk to a plumbing store. If you have a standard flexible hose/ shower head arrangement as in new houses consider a shower restriction washer of say 12 LPM. They fit in the hose where it screws to wall and cost only $10.

As a side note the majority of water use in a home is shower related so reducing this will cut electricity bills too.

Good luck and keep us posted.

-

[oc]

Your tenants may be on night rates for his/her water heating.

OC

[pixie]

I did find that having a teenage daughter myself was a major problem - I have no solution to this. :-)
In another home - I found that when I had the hot water temp turned up the running out of hot water problem totally disappeared. It was simply too cool and being consumed at too great a rate.
Finally - I had a 30 yr old tank and it was not heating particularly well. When the water element was replaced it not only gave me more hot water by reheating much more quickly but also lowered my power bills.

[fudosan]

In both of the two places that we rented a number of years, we were told to wait 10 minutes or more between showers or the next person would be enjoying a cold one. We simply followed the rule and it was only a minor inconvenience to us.