Question 1

Why is my geyser leaking?

Accepted Answer

A leaking geyser comes from one of four places: the pressure-control or T&P safety valve, the cylinder itself, the element gasket, or the inlet and outlet fittings. Work out which one and you know whether this is a valve swap or a full replacement. Water dripping only from the overflow pipe outside is a valve. Water in the drip tray or staining the ceiling is the cylinder or the flange, and that one does not get better on its own.

Question 2

Why is the geyser overflow pipe dripping constantly?

Accepted Answer

A small, occasional drip from the overflow is normal — water expands as it heats and the valve releases the extra pressure. A constant drip, especially overnight when municipal mains pressure peaks, means the pressure-control valve or the T&P valve has worn through. More than one drip per second is not thermal expansion, it is a failed valve wasting heated water onto your driveway and onto your bill.

Question 3

Why do I have no hot water?

Accepted Answer

No hot water is almost always one of three things: a tripped breaker or earth leakage, a failed element, or a failed thermostat. Check them in that order — electrical supply first, then thermostat, then element. If the breaker holds when you reset it but the water stays cold after two hours, the element or thermostat has gone. If the breaker trips again immediately, stop resetting it; that is a water-into-electrics fault.

Question 4

Why does my geyser keep tripping the earth leakage?

Accepted Answer

When a geyser trips the earth leakage, water has reached an electrical part — almost always a cracked element or a perished element gasket letting moisture into the terminal box. This is not a nuisance trip to be reset around. The earth leakage is doing exactly its job, and every reset re-energises a live component sitting in water. Switch the geyser breaker off and leave it off until it has been tested.

Question 5

Why is my geyser making popping or banging noises?

Accepted Answer

Popping, knocking or kettling comes from scale on the element. Water trapped under the limescale flashes to steam and the bubble collapses with a pop. The noise itself is harmless, but it is a direct warning that the element is running hot behind an insulating layer and will fail within months if the cylinder is not drained and descaled. Noise only during the heating cycle is the giveaway.

Question 6

Why isn't my geyser water hot enough?

Accepted Answer

Lukewarm water usually means the thermostat is set too low, has drifted out of calibration, or one element in a dual-element geyser has burnt out. Set the thermostat to 60–65°C and give it one full heating cycle. If it is still lukewarm after that, the thermostat or an element has failed. A geyser that used to be hot and is now only warm has almost always lost half its heating capacity.

Question 7

Why is the geyser pressure valve leaking?

Accepted Answer

The pressure-control valve is a four to five year wear item, not a fault in the geyser. Once it drips constantly, the diaphragm has perished and the valve can no longer seat. Replacement is quick and inexpensive. What matters is doing it before the drip becomes a flow — a failed-open PCV can drain heated water continuously, and the element keeps paying to reheat what runs down the overflow.

Question 8

How long should a geyser last in South Africa?

Accepted Answer

A standard SANS-compliant South African geyser lasts eight to twelve years. In hard-water Johannesburg suburbs without regular descaling, expect six to ten. The cylinder rarely fails without warning: rising electricity use, longer reheat times, popping noises and a weeping valve all arrive first. Treat year eight as the point to start budgeting rather than the point to start worrying, and replace proactively rather than through a ceiling.

Question 9

Why is my geyser drip tray overflowing?

Accepted Answer

Water in the drip tray itself means the cylinder, element flange or fittings are leaking inside the ceiling — not the safety overflow doing its job. The tray is the last line of defence and it is already full. This is a ceiling-collapse emergency measured in hours, not days. Isolate the power and the cold-water inlet immediately and get someone out the same day.

Question 10

Why does my hot water smell like rotten eggs?

Accepted Answer

A sulphur or rotten-egg smell from hot water is hydrogen sulphide, produced when bacteria in the cylinder react with a magnesium sacrificial anode. It is unpleasant rather than dangerous, and it is fixable: replacing the magnesium anode with an aluminium-zinc type resolves it permanently. If only the hot tap smells and the cold is clean, the cylinder is confirmed as the source.

Question 11

Why isn't my solar geyser heating?

Accepted Answer

A solar geyser that has stopped heating is usually a circulation pump failure, a degraded or empty glycol loop, a faulty controller sensor, or shaded and dirty panels. Start with what you can see: panel cleanliness, shading from a tree that has grown, and any fault code on the controller. If the backup element has also been disabled to save power during load shedding, you can be left with no heat at all from either source.

Question 12

Why isn't my heat pump heating water?

Accepted Answer

Heat pumps stop heating when refrigerant pressure is low, the fan or compressor is not running, or the controller has lost its temperature sensor reading. Because a heat pump moves heat rather than generating it, a small refrigerant loss shows up as weak heating long before it shows up as no heating. Power tripping during load shedding and never being restored is the single most common cause of an apparently dead unit.

Question 13

Why does my gas geyser pilot light keep going out?

Accepted Answer

A gas geyser pilot that will not stay lit is usually a failing thermocouple, a dirty pilot orifice, low gas supply, or wind back-draft down the flue. The thermocouple is the most common: it senses the pilot flame and shuts the gas valve when it cools, so as it ages it starts shutting the gas off while the pilot is still burning. Gas work needs a registered installer and a Gas COC.

Question 14

How much does it cost to replace a geyser in Johannesburg?

Accepted Answer

A compliant geyser replacement in Johannesburg ranges from about R7,500 to R14,000, and the spread is driven by size, brand, how accessible the geyser is, and how much compliance work the old installation is missing. A roof-space replacement costs more than a cupboard one for the same cylinder. The quote should be itemised, because the difference between a cheap and a fair price is usually the parts a cheap quote leaves out.

Question 15

Why does my geyser take so long to heat?

Accepted Answer

Slow heating points to a partly failed element, heavy scaling, a geyser undersized for the household, or a thermostat cycling early. A 150L geyser should reach temperature in roughly one and a half to two and a half hours from cold. If yours has drifted past three hours and used to be quicker, you have lost element output — usually to scale, sometimes because one element of a dual-element cylinder has failed.

Question 16

Why is my geyser water scalding hot?

Accepted Answer

Scalding water means the thermostat has failed closed or has been set too high. This is a genuine safety risk, not a comfort issue — at 65°C a child can be badly scalded in under five seconds, and above that the margin disappears entirely. If turning the thermostat down changes nothing within a heating cycle, the thermostat is stuck and the next thing to operate will be the T&P safety valve.

Question 17

When do I need a Plumbing COC for a geyser?

Accepted Answer

A Plumbing Certificate of Compliance is required when you sell a property in the City of Johannesburg, and any geyser installation or replacement should be accompanied by one confirming SANS 10254 compliance. It certifies that the drip tray, tray drain, vacuum breakers, safety valve, isolator and pipework all meet the standard. Insurers increasingly ask for it too, and a missing COC is a common reason a geyser claim is queried.

Question 18

Why is my vacuum breaker leaking?

Accepted Answer

Vacuum breakers sit on the hot and cold lines above the geyser and are required by SANS 10254. They stop the cylinder siphoning empty if mains pressure drops, which is what protects the element from dry-firing. They contain a perishable rubber diaphragm, so a weep after a few years is wear, not a defect. Replacement is quick and inexpensive, and skipping it risks the far more expensive failure it exists to prevent.

Question 19

Should I install a 150L or 200L geyser?

Accepted Answer

Size on simultaneous demand, not on bedrooms. As a working guide: 150L suits two adults, 200L suits three to four, and 250L suits four or more or any household that runs a bath and a shower at the same time. Oversizing costs you standing heat losses every day of the year; undersizing gives you cold showers every morning. The deciding question is how many hot outlets run at once at your busiest time.

Question 20

Is it worth installing a heat pump instead of a geyser?

Accepted Answer

A heat pump uses roughly a third of the electricity of an element geyser because it moves heat rather than making it. In Johannesburg, payback is typically three to five years for a household of four or more. It stacks up well where hot-water demand is high and consistent, and much less well for a couple in a small home, where the lower running cost takes far longer to repay the higher installation cost.

Question 21

What are the signs of a hidden water leak?

Accepted Answer

There are five reliable signs of a hidden leak: a rising water bill with unchanged usage, a meter that keeps ticking with every tap closed, damp patches on walls or floors, unexplained warm spots on tiles, and mould or peeling paint in one specific area. The meter test is the definitive one — if the dial moves with everything in the house closed, water is escaping somewhere between the meter and your taps.

Question 22

Why is my water bill suddenly so high?

Accepted Answer

A sudden jump in your bill with no change in usage almost always means a silent leak, and the usual culprit is a toilet inlet valve trickling continuously into the bowl. An irrigation line, a slab leak, or a stuck pool auto-fill valve account for most of the rest. A silent toilet leak can waste thousands of litres a month while making no sound and leaving no visible water anywhere.

Question 23

Why is there a wet patch on my wall?

Accepted Answer

A wet patch on a wall comes from an internal pipe leak, rising damp, a roof or flashing leak, or failed shower waterproofing on the other side. Temperature is the quickest discriminator: a warm patch is a hot-water line, a cool one is a cold line or damp. If the patch grows while taps are running, it is plumbing; if it grows after rain, it is the building envelope.

Question 24

What should I do if a pipe bursts at home?

Accepted Answer

Close the main stop-cock at the property boundary immediately, switch off the geyser and the DB board if water is anywhere near electrics, photograph everything for insurance, then call a plumber. Most insurers cover sudden burst-pipe damage but not gradual leaks, so the photographs and the timeline matter. Knowing where your stop-cock is before this happens is the single most useful thing in this whole answer.

Question 25

How much does leak detection cost?

Accepted Answer

Acoustic and thermal leak detection in Johannesburg runs from about R950 for a straightforward call-out to around R1,800 for complex multi-zone detection across a large property. In most cases the investigation cost is credited against the repair quote. It is almost always cheaper than the alternative, which is opening tiles, walls or a slab speculatively and repairing the damage afterwards.

Question 26

Why is my shower leaking into the ceiling below?

Accepted Answer

Upper-floor shower leaks are almost always failed waterproofing, perished silicone, a cracked tray, or a leaking waste connection — not the supply pipes. Supply leaks run constantly; shower leaks only appear after the shower is used, which is the tell. Water tracks along joists for weeks before it shows on the ceiling below, so by the time you can see a stain the leak has usually been running for some time.

Question 27

Why is there a warm spot on my floor?

Accepted Answer

A warm patch on a tiled or concrete floor is a slab leak on the hot-water line, almost always the buried geyser supply. Cold-line leaks present as cool, damp spots instead. Because the pipe is under the slab, the water has nowhere to go but sideways and downwards, so foundations and screed take the damage long before you see water. This one does not wait.

Question 28

Why does my tap keep dripping after I close it?

Accepted Answer

A dripping tap is a worn washer on older compression taps, or a failed ceramic cartridge on modern quarter-turn ones. A slow drip wastes roughly seventy-five litres a week, which is quiet money going down the drain. If a new washer or cartridge does not stop it, the seat the washer closes onto has been scored and needs re-seating or the tap needs replacing.

Question 29

How do I tell a geyser cylinder leak from a fitting leak?

Accepted Answer

Cylinder leaks show as water in the drip tray with rust staining on the cylinder body itself. Fitting leaks are localised — a damp copper joint with a dry, corrosion-free cylinder above it. The distinction matters enormously: a fitting leak is a thirty-minute repair, while a leaking cylinder means a full replacement plus a Plumbing COC. Wipe everything dry and look again in thirty minutes to see where water actually reappears.

Question 30

Why is my irrigation system leaking?

Accepted Answer

Garden irrigation leaks usually come from cracked solenoid valves, UV-perished poly-pipe joints, or rodent damage to drip line. Because the water soaks straight into the garden they can run for months unnoticed, and they are a frequent cause of an unexplained bill increase. Isolating the irrigation feed at the manifold and watching the meter tells you within minutes whether the garden is responsible.

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