I will attempt to be concise but include details in the hope that I don't have to drip feed later. Be kind....because it's a bit of a long story.
So- I moved with my husband and young children from an extended period overseas. Due to the Covid situation, we found a house online and agreed to rent it online. Due to the nature of assured shorthold tennacies in the UK we paid 12 months rent in advance.
We arrived and moved-in in August.
All was fine. We had a very very short handover, the owners did not even walk us around the house/property they just gave us keys and left us with an A4 file of info.
So, on December 27th we discovered unfortunately we had no heating or hot water.
This house is served by an oil fuelled burner which we had to fill in early November when the "watchman" digital alerter told us to fill it.
On discovering that the heating and hot water had failed we messaged the landlord who came out that day and inspected the system and showed us how to reset the boiler. He left feeling that everything was working but he did state that he would call for an engineer to investigate the failure.
At this point I must write that the hot water system has a back-up immersion heater installed in the event that the boiler fails.
We discovered that, as the boiler had failed, the immersion heater was not working. We messaged the landlord about this.
The engineer for the oil boiler came on the 29th and upon arrival, merely looked at the outdoor enclosure for the boiler and informed that since it was raining (drizzling) he could not and would not open the system to investigate what was wrong.
With a real need now to have, at least, hot water for our children we insisted that the landlord look at the back-up immersion that wasn't working. We stated that we believed the 13 amp fused socket was insufficient for the immersion heater and that a 20 amp was required. We sent him photos of the unit showing that the 13 amp socket had melted. He stated, in writing, that the immersion was broken and that he needed to replace the immersion heater itself as well as the socket. A plumber arrived and replaced the immersion and replaced the 13 amp socket.
The next day the hot water failed because the 13 amp socket failed and burned out. We were again left without any hot water and heating has been broken since the 27th.
We requested an emergency electrician and stated it was our belief that the 13 amp fused switch was insufficient for the load. The landlord refused our request.
We asked if we could please get an electrician to replace the 13 amp with a 20 amp and we got the reply that we had to pay for it but that the landlord would send the electrician. We agreed and the electrician attended and installed the new 20 amp switch. We paid for this and we now have hot water.
We have today received an email stating that the "damage" to the main oil burner is our fault and that the landlord will not pay for it. We must agree to pay for all repairs by return email or the repairs are not authorised to go ahead. The reason he has given is that we failed to fill the oil tank before a level that was too low to cause damage to the system.
The file of information left us did not state that if the oil level gets too low it would damage and potentially break the whole system. This is all new to us.
The level of oil, when we filled it, was below the "alert" level for the system they had installed.
We have stated that section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant act 1985 declares that tenants should not be without water or heating for more than 24 hours but the landlord replied that we are "misrepresenting the act" and that "we know it".
We are feeling very bullied and confused. We genuinely don't know if we have messed up a heating system or not, but we didn't have any information to tell us otherwise other than what was in the file. Currently we are looking at looking at a period of pre-paid tenancy with no heating at all unless we pay for repairs we really don't believe we have caused. We don't even know what damage (if any) there is to the system and what the cost of any potential repair is.
Any advice/comments/observations gratefully received. Thank you.