The Australian rental market moves fast. I've been living in Adelaide the last few years so I haven't experienced the lease wars (bidding wars on getting a lease) that are apparently a thing in Sydney and Melbourne. The thing I have experienced though is having my back against the wall with about two weeks to vacate before my lease expires with no good lease opportunities in sight.

I moved out of my bachelorhood apartment earlier this year and in with my partner. Neither of us could have foreseen the pitfalls we experienced but they are easy to look out for if you are aware of them.

Hot Water Heaters

It is quite easy to see how the hot water heater is setup at a property you are considering living in. DO NOT listen to what the agent says (as they likely have no clue) and do your own looking.

Start with the circuit breaker panel. If you see a circuit breaker with a 'boost' button then you have a storage hot water heater but it is connected in a reasonable manner to an 'off-peak' tariff, which will save about half over time.

If you do not see a 'boost' button, see if the property has natural gas and look around for a storage or on demand hot water heater on an exterior wall. If those are in place you should be happy!

The last case is effectively a thing that shouldn't exist, but the landlord is under no obligation to fix it if you are unhappy due to it fully functioning (ask me how I know!) even if setup moronically.

Full Time electric hot water on full rate electricity tariff

We moved into a 2 level semi-detached house in North Adelaide in February of 2020. Thankful it was not during the first COVID-19 lockdowns but the situation could have been better. All seemed like it was going well until we got out first power bill in June '20. We moved essentially all of my electronics (of which there were many), and added afew reptiles that were a known usage. My old quarterly power bills at my bachelor apartment were aroun A$650. The bills at the new place were over A$1100 in the first quarter and we were using 26kwh/day of usage (1.3x a family of 5).

Being an electrical engineer this had alarms going off in my head. At this point I still hadn't figured out how the hot water system was connected, although I knew it was not gas due to no gas meter being on site. I went out and bought half a dozen of these to monitor the situation around the house.

After doing some initial monitoring, there was consistently 8-10kwh/day missing from my power monitoring setup. I had the meters on the big items (entertainment setup/network, gaming PC, electric heater, reptiles, fridge) and had switched all the lights we use to LED so they should be rather negligible. This left me with the hot water heater setup.

I later learned that the hot water heater was connected to the full rate tariff (A$0.36/kwh) instead of the off-peak tariff. Upon spending tens of hours wasting time drafting emails and spending time combatting a scummy electrician who doesn't know how power consumption works I finally got to the 'black swan' of the interaction with my less-than-knowledgeable real estate agent. The landlords are unwilling to setup the property for two people, stating that "they are hesitant to change to a J-tariff because there will be less daily hot water available. Once you move out, if a family moves in, they will need to have it changed back again and this is all at their cost."

This news literally blew my mind. This was after I sent them this cost estimator from a manufacturer that would have no reason to overstate the difference.

I also sent over this UniSA study that goes into water heater differences to really show them what was going on.

It was around this point that I reached out to the South Australia Tenancy Advocate lawyers to look into what my options were. After a few hours of calling around they called me back and said, "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but your options now are to move or move early. The landlord is under no obligation to modify the system as it is fully functioning."

When to cut your losses

So now I sit in a holding pattern looking for a new place to move into, even contemplating breaking my lease early to wash my hands of this comical situation. I spent another A$180 to get my own electrician to come out and cost a job to upgrade the circuit breaker panel to allow the tenant to choose between full rate and off-peak tariff (coming in at under A$1000 of tax advantaged maintenance cost to them). Then landlord is yet to response to my request after 6 weeks, and I expect the quote I sent over has lapsed. I surely will not be engaging on the issue further.

I supposed when someone (landlord) shows their cards and hedges that the next idiot that moves in will not care about absurd power bills while the current tenant gets comically engrossed electricity bills while being uncomfortable (i.e. not using heaters) in the property it is time to cut losses. I know this Electrical Engineer tried his best, just wish I would've cut losses on the issue earlier.

In the Interim

Before we move on, I have devised a rather silly way to save money on the hot water heating bill. I am turning off the hot water heater circuit on the circuit breaker panel to allow the hot water heater to only be on for 4-8 hours every 36 hours, which leaves us with plenty of hot water (the 250L heater on site is sized for 4-5 people). It will save a few dollars a day and lets me sleep easier.