When the tank bursts: what insurance really pays.
The short version, before you ring anyone. Your insurer will very likely pay for the soaked hallway. They will very likely not pay for the tank that soaked it. That single distinction - sudden escape of liquid versus wear and tear - decides almost every hot water claim in South East Melbourne.
Isolate, power down, photograph, then call.
Do these in order. It takes two minutes and it is worth thousands.
- Isolate the water. There is a cold water isolating valve at the top of the unit - turn it off. If you cannot reach it or it is seized, shut the main tap at the meter. Know where that is before you need it.
- Kill the energy. Electric or heat-pump: switch off the circuit at the switchboard. An element firing in an empty tank will destroy itself in minutes. Gas: close the isolation valve at the unit.
- Photograph everything before you move it. The unit, the compliance plate showing the manufacture date, the water on the floor, the wet skirting, the soaked carpet. Assessors want to see it as it happened, not after you cleaned up.
- Then call. A licensed plumber to make it safe, and your insurer to open the claim. In that order - the make-safe stops the loss growing.
- Do not skip this one: do not throw the old unit out until the claim is settled. It is the evidence.
If it is happening right now rather than theoretically, stop reading and call us on 0485 813 822 - same-day hot water repairs across the South East, and we are usually on site in Berwick within two hours.
The line every insurer draws.
Generally covered.
- Water damage to the building fabric - carpet, underlay, plaster, skirting, flooring, cabinetry, doors - from a sudden escape of liquid.
- Contents damage, if you hold contents cover. In a rental, the renter's own things sit with the renter's contents policy, not the rental provider's.
- Emergency make-safe, and often the cost of locating and accessing the leak, sometimes up to a sub-limit.
- Drying, dehumidification and restoration, which on a bad one is the biggest line item of all.
Generally excluded.
- The failed unit itself. A rusted-through cylinder is wear and tear, gradual deterioration and corrosion - three exclusions in one. This is the big one and it surprises people every week.
- Gradual leakage. If it has been weeping behind the wall for months and quietly staining the plaster, that is not sudden. Insurers decline these.
- Unlicensed installation. Policies exclude loss arising from work that was required to be licensed and was not.
- Mould afterwards - often excluded or sub-limited, particularly if you delayed drying the place out.
Every policy is worded differently, so read your own PDS rather than taking our word for it. But that shape - damage yes, unit no - is what we see on South East Melbourne claims almost without exception.
What you pay, what they pay, and a worked example.
Your side of the ledger, at current South East Melbourne rates: diagnostic call-out $90 - $150, electric storage replacement $1,500 - $2,400, gas storage replacement $1,800 - $2,800, gas instantaneous $1,900 - $3,200, heat-pump $4,000 - $5,500 before rebates, relocation of the unit to a better position $450 - $1,200 on top. Typical home insurance excess in Victoria: $500 - $1,000.
A worked example - Narre Warren, 315L electric storage, 2009 plate.
Internal unit in a laundry cupboard, cylinder let go at 4am on a Sunday, water through the laundry, hallway and into two bedrooms before anyone woke up. Owner isolated at the meter, killed the circuit, photographed everything and called us at 7am.
How it settled. Not covered: the $1,950 replacement 315L unit and install, because the cylinder failed from corrosion. Covered: emergency make-safe and leak access, the $120 diagnostic, three days of drying equipment at $1,850, hallway and bedroom carpet and underlay at $4,200, plaster and skirting repairs at $2,300, and repainting at $1,400 - about $9,870 of building claim against a $750 excess. Net position: the owner paid $2,700 all up, the insurer paid roughly $9,100.
The uncomfortable footnote: that unit was 17 years old with a visible rust stain at the tundish that had been there for at least a year. A planned $1,950 replacement twelve months earlier would have avoided a $750 excess, a fortnight of disruption, a claim on the record and a rise at renewal. The insurer paid for the hallway. Nobody paid for the inconvenience. Our warning signs page covers the tells that were sitting there.
Why the South East gets more of these than it should.
Two things stack up here. The first is the age profile. The 1998 to 2008 building wave through Berwick, Narre Warren, Hampton Park and Endeavour Hills fitted a huge number of storage units at once, and they are all hitting 18 to 28 years now against a realistic 10 to 13 year cylinder life. Failures do not arrive evenly across the City of Casey - they arrive in a cohort, and we are in the middle of it.
The second is where they sit. Melbourne's water from the protected Cardinia and Silvan catchments is soft and low in dissolved solids, so tanks here do not scale up - they corrode from the inside once the sacrificial anode is consumed. A corroding cylinder does not warn you politely. It weeps, then it splits. And a great many of the units in those estates are internal, in a laundry or a hallway cupboard, which turns a $2,000 failure into a $10,000 one. An external unit on a pad that lets go just makes a puddle.
If your unit is internal and past 12 years, the smart money is on replacing it early and asking us about relocating it outside while we are there. The relocation adds $450 to $1,200 and permanently removes the flooded-hallway scenario from your life. Have a look at the pricing guide for the full picture, and the Narre Warren page for what is typical around here.
Insurance questions we get after the water stops.
Does home insurance cover a burst hot water system?
Usually it covers the damage but not the unit. Most Australian home policies insure you for the sudden escape of liquid, so the water damage to carpet, underlay, plaster, skirting, flooring and cabinetry is generally claimable, subject to your excess. The hot water system itself is almost always excluded, because a cylinder that has rusted through has failed by wear and tear, gradual deterioration or corrosion - and every policy excludes those. So the $2,200 replacement is on you and the $9,000 hallway is on them. Read your own PDS, because the wording varies by insurer.
What is not covered when a hot water tank leaks?
Four things catch people out. The failed unit itself is excluded as wear and tear. Gradual leakage is excluded - if it has been weeping behind the wall for months and staining the plaster, that is not a sudden escape and insurers will decline it. Damage from an unlicensed installation is excluded, which is why the compliance certificate matters. And mould that develops afterwards is often excluded or sub-limited, especially if you delayed drying the place out. Sudden and accidental is the language that gets paid; slow and known about is the language that does not.
What should I do in the first ten minutes after a hot water tank bursts?
Isolate, power down, photograph, then call. Turn off the cold water isolating valve at the top of the unit, or the main tap at the meter if you cannot reach it. Switch off the circuit at the switchboard for an electric or heat-pump unit, or close the gas isolation valve for a gas one. Take photographs of the unit, the compliance plate showing the manufacture date, and every wet surface before you move anything - assessors want to see it as it happened. Then call a licensed plumber and your insurer. Do not throw out the old unit until the claim is settled.
Will my insurer pay for the emergency plumber call-out?
Often, partly. Many policies include an emergency make-safe benefit or cover the cost of locating and accessing the leak, sometimes up to a sub-limit of a few thousand dollars. What they generally will not pay for is the new hot water unit or the fitting of it, because that is the excluded item. In practice the honest split on a South East Melbourne job looks like this: the $120 diagnostic and the make-safe may be claimable, the $2,200 replacement is not, and the $9,000 of drying, carpet and plaster is. Ask your insurer before you authorise anything beyond making it safe.
Does the compliance certificate matter for an insurance claim?
Enormously, and it is the cheapest protection you will ever buy. Under the Plumbing Regulations 2018 a licensed plumber must issue a compliance certificate for plumbing work valued over $750, lodged with the Victorian Building Authority. When a claim is assessed, the first questions are who installed the unit and whether it was done compliantly. If a previous owner had a mate fit it and no certificate exists, you are arguing from a weak position on a claim that may run into five figures. Keep the certificate with your house records permanently.
Burst tank response across the City of Casey and the South East.
Tank let go? Get it isolated and assessed today.
Make-safe, photographs for your claim, compliance certificate on the replacement. Same-day across the South East.