Not every gas geyser problem means you need a new unit. Before spending R12,200 or more on a replacement, get the fault properly diagnosed by a registered LP gas installer. our team works through gas supply, water flow, ignition and controls in order, then tells you honestly whether to repair, restore or replace.
A geyser that won't ignite is almost always missing one of three things: power at the igniter, gas at the burner, or enough water flow to tell the unit to fire. Those are cheap, everyday causes — dead batteries, an empty cylinder, a dirty burner or a sticking flow sensor — and none of them means the geyser is finished.
Swap in fresh batteries, confirm the cylinder isn't empty by lifting it, check the gas valve is fully open, and open a hot tap on its own to see whether the unit clicks. If it clicks but won't light, gas is the likely culprit. If nothing happens at all, it's power or the sensing side. Either way, phone 071 551 2108 and we will take it from there.
Hot then cold is a flow problem far more often than a gas problem. A gas geyser only fires while enough water is moving through it, so anything that drops the flow — a mixer tap blending in cold, a water-saving shower head, or another tap opening elsewhere in the house — can push it below the trigger point and back again.
Blending cold into the mix reduces the hot flow through the geyser. Premium units like Paloma and Rinnai handle mixers comfortably; smaller battery units are fussier. We measure the actual flow at the outlet rather than guessing.
Older Pacaltsdorp and Blanco plumbing, partly closed isolation valves and furred-up pipes all cut flow. We check pressure at the geyser, not just at the tap, because the difference between the two usually tells the story.
A cylinder that is running low, or standing in cold morning air, delivers inconsistent pressure. The flame drops, the water cools, then it recovers. Cylinder sizing and placement fix this permanently.
If your house runs solar and the geyser sees preheated water, the diagnosis changes again — see inline gas geysers for solar homes.
When a geyser runs for a few minutes and then dies, it is normally a safety device doing its job or a supply that can't hold up under load. The unit isn't being difficult — something is telling it to stop.
Poor ventilation or a flue that has been boxed in causes heat to build up and the safety cut-out to trip. Common where a geyser has been enclosed after the fact.
An outdoor unit with no cover in Herolds Bay, Glentana or Wilderness wind will blow out repeatedly. A properly built weather box solves it, and battery units need one anyway.
A near-empty cylinder or an under-sized regulator can't sustain the burn rate. It fires, runs, then starves — usually worse on the coldest mornings.
A sticky or contaminated sensor loses the flow signal mid-shower and shuts the burner down. It is a clean or a replace, and it is one of the cheapest repairs we do.
Every brand has its own habits, and knowing them saves time on site. None of these are reliability problems — they are the normal maintenance points of a hard-working appliance in a coastal town.
Paloma units are workhorses, and the faults we see are supply-side rather than build quality. Oil carried through from the gas line can contaminate the flow-sensing mechanism, and dirt in the spinner slows the signal the board relies on. Both clean up. Gas supply faults and inconsistent regulator pressure account for most of the rest.
Paloma 20L installation →Rinnai faults usually trace back to gas supply, water flow, or an electrical connection that has loosened or corroded. The installation environment matters too — a unit mounted where wind funnels across it, or too far from the cylinder on an undersized line, will behave badly no matter how good the geyser is.
Rinnai 20L installation →Dewhot 16L Constant Temperature units are excellent value and battery-powered, which means flat batteries are the single most common call. The board and loom also dislike rain and coastal moisture, so a Dewhot needs a weather cover. Mixer taps that drop the flow rate can also make it hunt between hot and warm.
Dewhot 16L installation →The Cadac 16L Ecoflow is a practical, low-flow-start unit that suits flats and lower pressure. Its limits are exactly that — flow rate and demand. If it is being asked to run a bath and a kitchen tap at once, it will struggle, and that is sizing rather than a fault. Batteries and weather exposure are the other two regulars.
Cadac 16L installation →we come out, listens to what the geyser has been doing, and tests rather than guesses. At the end you get one of three honest answers: repair it, restore it with a service and a setup correction, or replace it — with the reasoning behind whichever one it is.
Not clicking, hot then cold, cuts out after five minutes, cold in the mornings. Your words are the first clue and they narrow the search before we arrive.
Gas supply, water flow, ignition and controls, in that order, along with the installation itself — cover, ventilation, cylinder placement and line sizing.
What is wrong, what it costs to put right, and how long it takes. If parts must be ordered we say so upfront rather than after the fact.
The repair is done, the unit is tested under real use, and we come back if the fault reappears. Replacement is only recommended when repair genuinely isn't worth it.
“Very knowledgeable in gas and water”
“Returned several times until it worked properly”
“Expert advice”
The repairs hub: what we fix, how fast we get there, and what a typical repair involves across George and the Garden Route.
Back to repairsSymptom-by-symptom explanations of the faults George homeowners phone us about most, with the usual causes behind each one.
See common problemsWhen diagnosis shows the unit really is finished, here is what a like-for-like or electric-to-gas replacement costs and involves.
See replacementYes, and we do it every week. Most of the units we are called out to were fitted by somebody else, sometimes years ago, sometimes by a general plumber rather than a gas installer. We work on Paloma, Rinnai, Dewhot, Cadac, Bosch and imported units. If the installation itself is part of the problem — no weather cover, an undersized gas line, a cylinder in the wrong place — we will point that out too, because no replacement part fixes a bad install.
One call gets the fault found and priced before anything is replaced. Phone 071 551 2108 or send a WhatsApp with your suburb, the make of your geyser and what it is doing — we'll tell you what it usually means and when we can be there.