‘Someone could die’: Hot water cowboys on the loose for years
The loophole that allowed 100,000 discounted heat pumps to be installed across NSW without check on the tradies doing the work has been revealed.
NSW
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Dodgy heat pump cowboys were able to evade detection from the Minns government for more than two years due to a major loophole in regulation, it can be revealed.
The requirement for a business to provide qualification details of its workers installing hot water systems was only introduced late last year, as industry representatives were warning “somebody could die”.
Prior to this rule change, checks on licensed tradespeople were only conducted through random audits from the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) and monitoring from the NSW Building Commission.
However, an estimated 100,000 discounted heat pumps were installed across the state between the introduction of a lucrative government incentive in February 2022 and IPART introducing the mandatory licence rule in November 2024.
Recent inspections from the NSW Building Commission have subsequently uncovered heat pump compliance levels of between 9 and 37 per cent, an issue the commissioner James Sherrard described as “systemic”.
The Daily Telegraph has highlighted multiple examples of horror heat pump installation jobs across Sydney, including dangerous circuit-boards, unsafe wiring and bathroom basins which can produce scalding-hot water.
It can further be revealed several Australian hot water companies were raising the alarm during a meeting with state government agencies in November last year, just as the compulsory licence rule began.
During the discussions, the industry voiced concerns about a large number of “split heat pump systems” that had been sold in NSW by unqualified workers. Multiple sources have told the Telegraph an industry representative warned government bureaucrats that the situation had “moved from possible to probable that somebody could die”.
A separate industry member had also asked the state government representatives: “If someone was killed, would a coroner determine you had done enough to keep people safe?”
In the last few months, Master Plumbers NSW has conducted its own inspections of 135 heat pump systems and found 43 examples of “major noncompliance”.
Bill Armstrong from Master Plumbers described some of the work he had seen as “horrendous”, “dangerous” and “totally illegal”.
A federal government initiative combined with two NSW schemes encouraging people to replace their electric or gas hot water systems, allowed new energy-saving heat pumps to be sold in commercial premises for free and households for just $33. It was wound up in June last year after IPART received reports of “false advertising”, aggressive sales techniques and poor-quality products.
IPART was unable to confirm yesterday how many audits it had conducted prior to introducing the mandatory licensing requirements.
FULL IPART STATEMENT:
“ In November 2024 IPART notified Accredited Certificate Providers of a new requirement to provide licence information as part of a data upload when registering Energy Savings Certificates under the scheme.
“This change was made to improve our compliance monitoring capacity and to more easily share data with relevant regulators when required. However, as part of IPART’s administration of the Energy Savings Scheme, audits of Accredited Certificate Providers are also conducted to verify an ACP’s ongoing compliance.”
Do you know more? Email: james.willis@news.com.au
Originally published as ‘Someone could die’: Hot water cowboys on the loose for years
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