WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON’T HAVE HOT WATER
During a major outage, priority will be given to restoring the main power before hot water.
It can take up to 6 hours for a hot water cylinder to reheat once power has been restored after an outage. If you have no hot water:
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Check that your hot water cylinder is on
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If your hot water cylinder is heated by gas then contact a registered plumber
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If your hot water cylinder is heated by electricity then please call us 0508 VECTOR (0508 832 867) or report it via the app.
Depending on the extent of the damage caused by a storm or major outage, some customers on the North Shore, Waitakere and Rodney may be without hot water until we’ve restored power to all customers. Once this is done, then our crews will start working on restoring hot water.
HOT WATER RESTORATION AFTER A STORM
There are two types of hot water networks in Auckland - the ripple relay and the pilot wire network. The ripple relay network is remotely controlled via the low voltage (LV) electricity network whereas pilot relays are controlled via a separate pilot wire on the electricity network.
Auckland’s northern network (North Shore, Waitakere and Rodney) has a mix of both pilot wire and ripple relay for hot water, whereas the rest of Auckland only has the ripple relay system.
When there is widespread outages caused by storms, priority is given to restoring main power lines first as they supply power to lights and other electrical appliances in homes. Hot water for customers on the ripple relay can then be remotely turned on again once the main power lines are restored.
Things are a bit more complicated for customers whose hot water is controlled by pilot relays. Even when outages on the main power lines are resolved, our field crews have to restore the pilot circuits as well in order to get hot water going again.
See the latest updates on power restoration following Tuesday's storm here