Help!! Water tank knackered-what can we do?

[Waffle12]

Morning all.

We have a home emergency which no one seems to be able to help us with.

So our water tank is in our airing cupboard-it WAS fixed to the wall in there. We also have solar water panels so its connected.

On Saturday night about midnight, got woken up by a massive crash and went out onto the landing to find the water tank has come away from the wall and water trickling everywhere!!! Cue major panic!!

It is still attached, although sitting at a 90 degree angle from the wall having landed on a shelf we have in the airing cupboard. We think the pipe that takes water into the tank is the one that has broken/come away as when we turned the stock off the water stopped leaking.

We have British gas homecare that covers plumbing and they came out yesterday morning but they wont really touch it as it is linked to the solar panels-so they are out.
He did manage to isolate the tank so that no more water will go into the tank, so we have our cold water supply back on. But we have no hot water as that all comes from the tank. We left the hot tap running to basically drain what we could from the tank to lessen the chance of anything else starting to leak!

So to this morning. We have called Alpha who is the company that produces the boiler, tank and solar panels we have. We are still under warrantee with them for anything that actually goes wrong with the solar system, and funnily enough they were at ours a week ago to fix a faulty sensor on the tank (seems a bit of a coincidence the tank was on the wall for 7 years and a week after they touch it it falls off!). Anyway they said as it looked like they didnt install the tank, they wont do anything for us!

We bought this house 1.5yrs ago, and it was built in 2012, so the house is approx 7 years old. We went through some docs and found evidence of the company/man that installed it. But we cannot find any details of him on the internet and the phone number that is on the docs looks like it is no longer in service.

I feel stuck!! It looks like possibly the only thing we can do is find an Alpha approved installer and see if they can help but cant get hold of anyone today-understandably. But we are then looking at probably paying through the nose as they will be approaching the problem from scratch. I was hoping that either Alpha or the installer would HAVE to help us as it looks like it was possibly incorrectly installed in the first place. The wall it was on doesn't seem very strong so possible shouldn't be on there.

I was hoping for any ideas or suggestions on how to handle this. The house is still under 10 years old so should still be under the 10 year building warrantee, but guessing that wont help us?

Cant believe its bank holiday weekend, we have no hot water, we have a 4 year old and I am 6 months pregnant, and can barely get into the bathroom as the airing cupboard door is wedged open coz of the tank which is then mostly cutting off the entrance to the bathroom.

Can anyone help in terms of what else we could do? Apologies-we are not very practical when it comes to house things.

Thank u for reading.x

Have you tried a local plumber?

Hi

Thanks for replying.

We havent no-I figured that if BG wouldn't touch it coz of the solar panels then a local plumber wouldn't. Also worried that if we dont get a 'solar specialist' to deal with it then it might mean that the warrantee on this then lapses (assuming the tank can be saved in the first place).

I will have a look for local plumbers though year-and see if they deal with tanks linked to solar panels. Guessing they wont be working today so will get a lost ready for tomorrow.

Dows your house insurance include Home Emergency cover? If so, pass the buck to them to assess/organise etc.

Would it be covered under your home insurance as I assume the tank would count as a fixture

I think home and contents insurance. Was the tank fitted as part of the house build? If not I doubt it’d be covered by the new build guarantee.

Thank u for all your replies. The tank was installed as part of the house build. I have heard that the 10 year building warrantee thing is hard to claim on as it only really covers the structure. Still trying to find the document for it.

I did try the company we have the buildings insurance with and we have emergency cover with them, but when I mentioned we had the BG homecare and we had already called them, they said it was a conflict of cover and so wouldn't help us. That does sound strange to me, but I'm not very savvy when it comes to all this stuff and it was 1am when i called them in a panic. We do have contents insurance with someone else (not economical I am aware but we carried over the contents insurance from our last place and havent got round to bringing buildings and contents in line with same company). Do u think this would come under buildings or contents insurance?

I would say buildings as it's a fixture rather than something you would take with you if you moved house