Safety guidance on immersion heaters

Following the tragic death of a baby in Somerset who died from being scalded by water from a hot water tank with a faulty thermostat, we have urged residents in Devon & Cornwall Housing Association, Tor Homes and Penwith Housing Association homes to be aware of a rare, but potentially serious scalding risk from domestic hot water systems.

Only those tenants with an electric immersion heater fitted in their hot water cylinder and a cold water storage tank in the loft are possibly at risk.

Most of our homes have already had a fail-safe thermal cutout fitted and we have an ongoing programme of updating the remaining properties with the new device.

To help residents there are warning signs to look out for:

• excessively hot water coming out of the hot water taps;
• excessive noise or ‘bubbling’ from the hot water cylinder;
• hot water coming out of cold water taps in the bathroom.
• steam/moisture in the roof space.

If you do experience any of these problems, you should immediately turn off the immersion heater using the switch located near the hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard, run a tap to cool the system and report the fault to us using the telephone numbers in the contact section of this web site.

We will treat your call as a priority and skilled staff will visit you to sort out the problem.