The Unit, Sized Properly
Capacity matched to the household rather than to whatever was there before, which in a holiday house is often much too small or much too large.
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Geyser installation in Ballito done to SANS 10254, with the tray, the vacuum breakers and the discharge run all present rather than assumed. The certificate is handed over without being chased, and you are given the registration number and told to go and verify it yourself.
If you can reach the unit safely, read us the date stamp and the capacity off the plate. That tells us whether this is a warranty conversation before it is a replacement one.
The items below are not extras. An installation missing any one of them does not comply, whatever the invoice says.
Capacity matched to the household rather than to whatever was there before, which in a holiday house is often much too small or much too large.
A tray under the unit and a drain that actually discharges somewhere. The most commonly missing item and the one that saves the ceiling.
On both hot and cold, mounted above the geyser at the required height, which is where they are most often found sitting too low.
Temperature and pressure valve with its discharge run to open air where you can see it, plus the correct control valve on the inlet.
The first stretch of hot pipework lagged, which is a compliance item and also the cheapest efficiency you will ever buy.
Issued on completion and handed over unasked, with a registration number you are told to check yourself before paying.
When somebody in Ballito needs a plumber, the single most visible answer available to them is a community group thread. The top organic result for this town's main plumbing search is exactly that: a resident asking for a reliable, affordable plumber, and fifty four replies underneath it. Read them and a pattern emerges immediately. They are almost entirely bare mobile numbers, posted by people recommending themselves. No registration, no trading name in most cases, nothing you could check even if you wanted to.
That is not a criticism of the people posting, many of whom are perfectly competent. It is an observation about what the market offers you as a default, and about why the questions Google shows around plumbing searches here are what they are. Alongside all the price questions sits a blunt one: how can I verify a plumber? People are asking that because the ordinary route gives them no way to.
For geyser work this matters more than for anything else on this site, because geyser work is the work most likely to end in an insurance claim. A cylinder that lets go in a roof does not cause a plumbing problem, it causes a ceiling, a carpet and sometimes a kitchen. That claim will be assessed, and the assessor is entitled to ask whether the installation was done to standard and by whom. At that point a certificate either exists and holds up, or it does not.
Here is the part that catches people out. A certificate is only as good as the registration behind it on the day it was issued. Registration lapses. Somebody registered three years ago may not be registered this morning, and a certificate written this morning on a lapsed number is decorative. The Plumbing Industry Registration Board maintains a public register at pirb.co.za precisely so that you do not have to take anybody's word for this, and checking takes about a minute.
So ask us for the number, and then go and look it up before you pay us. We are aware that publishing this invites you to check on us specifically, and that is the point. Advice that only ever works in our favour is not advice, it is marketing, and a trade where nobody can be verified is a trade where doing the job properly earns you nothing.
Four things to get in writing. All four are reasonable to ask of anybody.
The date stamp gets read before anybody talks about a new unit.
Read off the plate before replacement is discussed, because it sometimes means the tank costs you nothing.
Tray, drain, breakers and valves priced in, not discovered as extras once the old unit is out.
Number given up front, with an instruction to go and check it before paying us anything.
Issued on completion and handed over, along with photographs of what was found and what was fitted.
Cost, compliance, and how to check the person issuing your certificate.
The honest answer is that it depends on four things, and you should be told which of them apply before anyone quotes: the size and type of the unit, whether the existing installation already has a compliant tray and drain or needs one built, whether the position is accessible or is in a roof space with limited headroom, and whether the old unit has to be cut out and carried down. A quote that does not mention the tray and the drain is a quote that has not looked at your installation.
Ask for the PIRB registration number and check it yourself at pirb.co.za before you pay anything. What counts is whether that registration was live on the date written at the top of your certificate. Somebody registered for years who let it lapse last quarter can still hand you an impressive looking document, and your insurer will treat it as waste paper on the one day it was meant to protect you. We give the number without being asked and we tell you to go and check it, which is advice directly against our own commercial interest.
The legal position and the insurance position are not the same thing, and it is the second one that will cost you money. Regardless of what is strictly demanded of you at the point of installation, your insurer is entitled to ask for evidence that hot water work was done to standard when you claim for water damage, and a claim for a ruined ceiling is precisely when they will ask. A certificate costs very little alongside the installation. Not having one costs nothing at all until the day it costs everything.
More than most people expect, and the items most often missing are the cheap ones. A correctly sized drip tray under the unit with a drain that discharges somewhere visible. A vacuum breaker on both the hot and the cold side, mounted above the geyser. A temperature and pressure safety valve with a discharge pipe run to open air. Correct insulation on the first stretch of pipework. A functioning isolating valve. Any one of those missing means the installation does not comply, whatever it says on the invoice.
Read the date stamp on the unit first, before anybody discusses replacement at all. A geyser inside its manufacturer warranty may entitle you to a replacement cylinder at no cost for the tank itself, and you would be paying only for the labour and the ancillaries. We check that date as a matter of routine and we will tell you when the answer means a far smaller invoice for us. If it is out of warranty and the tank has gone, replacement is genuinely the answer. See geyser repair.
Somewhere you can see it, and that is not a technicality. The temperature and pressure valve discharge is a safety device, and it is also the single best early warning you will ever get that a geyser is in trouble. If it is piped into a hidden gully or through a wall into a bed, it can drip for months without anybody knowing, and the first sign of a problem becomes a stained ceiling instead of a wet patch on a wall you walk past daily. It costs nothing to route it visibly at installation and it is expensive to change later.
Yes, and a good share of this work on the coast is exactly that. We can meet an agent, a caretaker or a neighbour with a key, photograph the existing installation before anything is touched so you can see what was actually there, send the quote to you wherever you are, and send photographs of the finished installation with the certificate. Everything is documented as a matter of course, because when you are not standing there the documentation is all you have.
For a straightforward like-for-like replacement in an accessible position, most of a morning. If the tray and drain have to be built, or the unit is going somewhere awkward, allow the day. We will tell you which of those applies before the day rather than at ten o'clock on the morning itself, because in a holiday-let house the difference between half a day and a whole day is sometimes the difference between a changeover working and not.
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Read us the date stamp and capacity off the geyser plate if you can reach it safely. That one detail decides whether this is a warranty claim or a replacement.