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phillcoxonThought I’d chip in and say that we’re having similar issues in our current house with power bills looking to be in excess of $600.
We’ve partly tracked this down to a faulty thermostat on the hot water tank which had increased the tap water temperature to 80 degrees C! (We knew it was hot and were “getting around to” fixing it but hadn’t realised it was THAT hot). We’re now turning it down and retesting every couple of days to get it to a more reasonable level and see if it will hold.
It’s also an older hot water tank with an undersized heating element so we suspect it’s running for long period each day just to maintain water temperature. We had a plumber come in to install a higher wattage element on the basis that it will heat and maintain the water temperature much faster and hence use less power overall.
Unfortunately the existing element is completely stuck and unable to be extracted without risk of damaging the tank so we’re exploring other possible solutions.
