The Wall, the Fence and the Flue Decide This Before You Do
If your house is one of the early-1900s bungalows, the roof is not the answer here and the side of the house decides the rest. The ceiling void is shallow: nowhere out of sight to run new pipework, nowhere to stand a tank. The side setbacks are narrow. The 1950s State Housing Commission dwellings among them, and the infill on lots since split, leave a plumber no more external room.
So the position you already have is frequently the only compliant one, and the shortlist is short:
- A storage cylinder back into the footprint it already occupies. The quickest version of this job.
- A continuous flow unit on that wall instead. It hands the footprint back to you, and the gas line and meter have to carry a far heavier draw.
- A heat pump, where the setback can give it clear air on every side plus somewhere for condensate to drain. A narrow one cannot.
- Roof collectors and a tank platform, which this stock supports least: shallow ceiling void, and a roof the street looks straight at.
Walk Out to the Footpath and Look Back
A Bassendean address comes under the Town of Bassendean, and that authority covers the whole suburb, so no street here answers to a different council.
The Town keeps a Heritage List and adopted a Local Heritage Survey in July 2022. On a property recorded in either, the question is not who owns the building. It is what a person on the footpath can see. A replacement cylinder tucked down the side, out of that view, stays ordinary plumbing work. Collectors on a street-facing pitch, or a new flue cut through a wall the road looks at, change what the property presents, and on a listed or surveyed dwelling that goes to the Town first.
This is a check you can run yourself. Walk out to your front boundary, turn around, and look at the house the way a passer-by does. Whatever you can see from there is the part the registers care about.
The Town also positions itself as a Gold Waterwise Council, favouring efficient systems and fixtures, so efficiency is genuinely wanted here. On these houses the efficient option that survives the footpath test isn’t the one on the roof. It’s a continuous flow unit on the wall you already have.
When the Decision Has to Be Made This Afternoon
About one occupant in four here rents, so a Bassendean changeover commonly starts with a tenant reporting a cold shower and a landlord approving the work that day. Nobody in that chain has a week to compare systems. That is the practical argument for having the answer in hand while the unit is still heating.
A cylinder that has split against a timber-framed wall will not wait either, and that call reaches MCN Plumbing Perth whatever the hour, weekends and small hours included.
A job placed before 10:30am carries MCN’s guarantee of same-day service, and that guarantee is written to take in work nobody would call urgent: the cylinder still running that you have already decided to replace. A landlord or agent holding several Bassendean addresses can run the job through our service for property managers.
What MCN Plumbing Perth Settles Before Ordering a Unit
MCN Plumbing Perth has had one owner since Milad Nasr started it in 2015, and on this stock the skill that earns its keep is saying which system type your wall will take. The badge matters less than the wall, and MCN works across every brand, Rheem, Rinnai, Vulcan, Bosch and AquaMax among them. The plumber who attends holds a plumbing licence and full insurance, and carries the gasfitting licence a gas connection needs as well. Our hot water systems page sets out the rest of what MCN holds.
A Fault in a Part, or a Fault in the Tank
Our plumber’s first job is deciding whether the fault is in a part or in the tank. Parts come out and go back in: an element, a thermostat, a gas control valve, an ignition assembly. The tank does not. Water escaping through the cylinder wall, a heat exchanger that has failed, or a model whose parts nobody makes any more all end the argument. MCN installs and services all four system types across the makes, so the wall narrows your shortlist rather than a badge.
Replacement brings the position with it. A wall that carried a unit fitted decades ago answers now to AS/NZS 3500, the installation standard behind every one of those measurements, and it applies to the new unit whether or not the old one satisfied it. Our plumber measures that wall again: boundary distance, clearance to the openings, and where a flue can terminate clear of a neighbour. AS/NZS 3500 also caps the temperature reaching the shower, the bath and the handbasin of a new or relocated system, and meeting that cap falls to the installer rather than to the appliance. Our plumber fits the tempering device and commissions it to hold that limit on the new installation, not on the unit it replaces.
Four things belong in the conversation before you give the go-ahead. Which system type and fuel is going in. Whether it returns to the position the old one came out of. What the change drags in behind it: flue, gas line, relief drainage, electrical work. And what the workmanship guarantee covers.
Because the labour here goes into the position, not into the appliance, ask which guarantee covers that work: MCN offers 100% guaranteed results across all of our work. MCN’s upfront pricing guarantee handles the rest, so you approve one price and no second one arrives behind the flue work. Where a changeover turns up a fault in the pipework instead, that becomes ordinary plumbing work at a Bassendean address.
Two Minutes at the Kitchen Sink
Start at the kitchen sink. If the cold tap behaves and the hot one has nothing to give, the fault is on our side: the unit, or the pipe feeding it. Pressure down on both sides, or colour in the water at any tap, puts the problem upstream of your property, which the Water Corporation carries. Neither check applies to gas. Clear everyone out at the first smell of it near the unit, ring the gas network operator’s emergency line once you are outside, and a gasfitter takes over after the site is made safe.
Your Address Answers This, Not the Suburb
Walk out to the front boundary, look back, then book on 0418 871 934. Email info@mcnplumbingperth.com.au or the contact form here take it too. If the unit is visible from the street, say so in that first message. We will come back with what can go into that position, and whether the Town has any interest in it.
0418 871 934
