Like-For-Like Replacement
A failed cylinder swapped for an equivalent, with the valves and tray brought up to standard as part of the job.
Home/Geyser Installation
Geyser installation in Hermanus is measured before it is ordered and certified before it is invoiced. Cylinder, trap door and platform are all checked on the quoting visit, which is where these jobs are normally lost.
Tell us what is there now and what went wrong with it. If a repair would do instead, we will say so before quoting a replacement.
From a straight swap to moving a cylinder off the one ceiling in the house you would least like it to fail over.
A failed cylinder swapped for an equivalent, with the valves and tray brought up to standard as part of the job.
Pressure control, expansion relief, vacuum breakers and a tray with an overflow that actually discharges where you can see it.
Moving a cylinder off a bedroom ceiling and onto an outside wall or into a service space, where a failure costs you nothing.
Issued on completion and handed over before the invoice closes, in the form an insurer and a conveyancer will accept.
Working to an assessor’s scope, with the shortfall between the approved amount and a compliant installation set out in writing.
Where the numbers genuinely justify it. Quoted honestly against a straight replacement so you can compare like with like.
Read enough public feedback about plumbing in this district and one complaint appears more often than any technical one. It is not about workmanship, and it is not about price. It is about a job that was paid for in full and then simply never finished, because the certificate never arrived and the phone stopped being answered. One account describes chasing a Certificate of Compliance for six months after the bill was settled. Another describes the same pattern as a pattern.
The reason this bites harder in the Overstrand than it would elsewhere is what a certificate is actually for here. This is a district where property changes hands constantly and where a very large share of owners are not resident. When a house is sold, the conveyancer asks for the plumbing certificate. When a ceiling comes down at three in the morning, the insurer asks for it. In both cases the person holding the paperwork is usually somewhere else entirely, working from a folder of documents rather than from memory. A missing certificate is not an administrative annoyance in that situation. It is a transaction that stops.
There is also a structural reason it goes wrong so often, and it is worth naming because it tells you what to insist on. A certificate is the only part of a plumbing job with no physical presence. The cylinder is visibly there, the water is visibly hot, and the invoice is visibly settled. The document is the one deliverable whose absence is easy not to notice until the moment you need it, which is typically years later. Anything that is easy not to notice is easy not to do.
So the order here is fixed and deliberately inconvenient for us: the certificate is issued and handed over before the final invoice is closed, not after it. That sequencing is the entire safeguard. While an account is still open you have leverage; the moment it is settled you have nothing but goodwill, and the complaints above are what goodwill turns into. We would rather build the guarantee into the order of operations than promise it in a sentence.
The same logic applies to the trap door, which is the other classic failure on these jobs: a cylinder ordered without measuring, discovered not to fit, and forced through an opening that then gets damaged and disowned. Before anyone orders a geyser for your house, ask two questions. Has the trap door been measured against the cylinder, and will the certificate be in my hand before the final invoice? A yes to both removes almost every way this job goes wrong.
A failed electric cylinder does not have to be replaced with another one. Both alternatives are installed here, and both are quoted against a straight replacement so you can see what the difference buys. Neither is decided by the appliance. A gas geyser is decided by where its gas and flue can go, and a solar geyser by the roof it has to sit on.
A gas geyser heats water as it passes through, so there is no cylinder of stored water in the ceiling to burst and nothing being kept hot while the house stands empty. It is sized by flow rather than volume. A unit is rated in litres per minute, and the right one is set by how many hot taps and showers you expect to run at the same time.
Most gas geysers only light once enough water is flowing through them, and every model states a minimum working pressure. That matters on a supply the municipality manages hard: for Kleinmond and Palmiet it has said in writing that low pressure will not be fully resolved in the short term while holidaymakers are in town. So the pressure at your taps is measured before a unit is chosen, not after it refuses to light in December.
The rest is gas work and is certified as gas work. The cylinders are sited to SANS 10087-1, the flue goes to outside air or an outdoor-rated unit goes on an external wall, and a Certificate of Conformity from a SAQCC Gas registered installer is issued on completion.
A solar geyser is a cylinder, a collector on the roof, and the pipework, pump and controller between them. Where your existing cylinder is young and sound, converting it by adding a collector is often possible. That is the cheaper way in, and where it applies it is quoted first.
Almost everything that goes wrong with solar goes wrong on the roof, so that is where the installation is decided. The collector faces north, the roof is checked for the load and the fixings, every penetration is sealed and the exposed pipe runs are lagged. A system with its tank on the roof puts the full weight of the stored water up there too, and the structure is checked for that before anything is lifted.
Two settings decide what it saves. The backup element still heats on cloudy days, and if its timer is left wide open it does the work the sun was meant to do. A house that stands empty for weeks draws no hot water at all, so the system has to cope with a full, hot tank under a sunny roof. Both are set up and explained at handover.
Each one exists because it is a way these jobs are known to go wrong.
Handed over while the account is still open, so the paperwork never depends on goodwill.
Trap door, platform and pressure recorded on the quoting visit. Nothing arrives that will not go in.
Tray, valves, overflow and making good are in the quote. The number does not grow once the roof is open.
If the cylinder is sound and a valve or element is the fault, you get the smaller job quoted instead.
What does a new geyser installation cost in Hermanus?
The cylinder itself is the smaller half of it. What moves the figure is the drip tray, the overflow route, bringing old pipework and valves up to standard, and access. All of that is measured on site and quoted as one number before anything is ordered, so the price does not grow once the roof is open.
Do I get a Certificate of Compliance, and when?
Yes, and before the final invoice is closed rather than after it. A certificate chased after payment is a certificate you have no leverage to get, which is the single most common complaint people in this district make about plumbing work.
Is a plumbing CoC actually compulsory?
National law does not demand one for every job in the way it does for gas. Your insurer is a different matter, and so is the buyer’s conveyancer when the property is sold. A cylinder replaced without a certificate is a cylinder that can complicate a claim and a sale, which is why it is issued here as a matter of course.
Will the new geyser fit through the existing trap door?
That is measured before anything is ordered, because it is exactly where these jobs go wrong. Cylinder diameter, trap door opening and the run to the platform are all checked on the quoting visit. If the opening has to be enlarged, that is quoted and agreed in writing first. It never gets widened on the day as a surprise.
Which size cylinder should I put in?
Sizing is about how many people draw hot water at the same time, not about the size of the house. Swapping a 150 litre for a 200 litre also means checking the platform will take the extra mass and that the electrical supply suits the element. We would rather have that conversation before ordering than after.
Should I go solar or heat pump instead?
Both work well on this coast and both cost considerably more up front than a replacement cylinder. The honest test is how long you intend to own the house and how much hot water you actually draw. If a straight replacement is the right answer for you, we will say so rather than sell you a roof full of collectors.
What has to be fitted alongside the cylinder to comply?
A drip tray with an overflow taken to a visible point outside, a pressure control valve matched to the cylinder rating, expansion relief, a vacuum breaker on each of the hot and cold sides, and an isolating valve you can actually reach. SANS 10254 covers the detail, and skipping any of it is what makes a certificate impossible to issue.
How long does the whole job take?
Most straightforward replacements are a single day, including draining down, removing the old cylinder, fitting and commissioning. Where the old installation has no drip tray or no proper overflow route, add time for making that good. You will be told which of the two yours is at quoting stage.
Get In Touch
Tell us what is up there now, roughly how old it is, and whether this is an insurance job or your own. We will come back with a measured quote and a date.