Heating a rental property in Ballarat.
What the Victorian rental minimum standards actually require, the safety checks you are legally on the hook for, which system is worth the money in an investment property, and the trap sitting in a lot of older Ballarat rentals.
What the law asks of a Ballarat rental.
Under the Victorian rental minimum standards in the Residential Tenancies Regulations 2021, a rental property must have a fixed heater in the main living area. That word fixed does the work. A plug-in oil column or fan heater does not satisfy it, no matter how well it heats the room. And where the heater was installed after 29 March 2021, it must also be an energy-efficient fixed heater rather than any old unit pulled out of a shed.
In Ballarat this catches more properties than owners expect. A good slice of the rental stock is pre-1960 weatherboard through Ballarat East, Golden Point and Soldiers Hill, and plenty of it was let for years with a portable heater in the lounge and nothing else. That was never really adequate for a Central Highlands winter and it is not compliant now.
Victoria has also announced a broader set of minimum standards covering ceiling insulation, draught sealing, cooling and hot water, phasing in for new rental agreements and then for all agreements. The detail and the dates have moved before, so check the current Consumer Affairs Victoria position before you commit money to a specific upgrade. Worth knowing who enforces what: the rental minimum standards sit with Consumer Affairs Victoria, not with the City of Ballarat. A council inspection will not catch a non-compliant heater for you, and the first time it gets tested is usually when a renter applies to VCAT. We will tell you honestly at quote time what we think applies to your property and what is still uncertain. We would rather you hear that than get sold a package on a date that later shifts.
The two-year gas check is yours, not the renter’s.
If the property has gas, a gas safety check every two years by a licensed gasfitter is a rental provider obligation. You arrange it, you pay for it, you keep the record, and you give the renter the date of the most recent check if they ask. The same two-year cycle applies to the electrical safety check. This is not something a renter can be asked to organise or reimburse.
Two years is the legal floor, not our recommendation. Ballarat sits at roughly 435m in the Central Highlands and is one of the coldest population centres in Victoria, with frosts running May through September. A ducted gas heater in a Ballarat rental racks up far more running hours across a winter than the same unit would in a bayside suburb. We suggest an annual service on any ducted gas unit in an investment property, partly for safety and partly because a heater that dies in July is a very expensive emergency. Our service and repair page covers what a proper service includes.
Open-flued heaters and carbon monoxide.
This is the one that should worry a Ballarat landlord. Carbon monoxide is the serious hazard with older gas heaters. An open-flued heater draws combustion air from inside the room and vents through a flue. If the heat exchanger cracks or the flue corrodes or blocks, carbon monoxide spills into the living space, and it is colourless and odourless. The risk gets worse, not better, when a home has been draught-proofed or has a rangehood or bathroom exhaust fan running, because negative pressure can pull flue gas back down into the room.
Ballarat’s older housing stock has plenty of these units still in service. A carbon monoxide test to AS 4575, the standard for servicing domestic gas appliances, on every service is the control that catches it. As the rental provider that duty sits with you. If your current tradesperson has never mentioned CO testing on an older open-flued heater, that is a genuine red flag, and the choosing an installer guide explains the other ones.
Match the spend to the property.
Landlords get sold systems that do not suit the asset. Our honest split:
- Three or four bedroom family home in Alfredton, Wendouree or Delacombe, aimed at long-stay families: ducted gas heating at $7,500 to $13,000 stacks up. Whole-home warmth is what keeps a family through a Ballarat winter and keeps them renewing.
- Two-bedroom unit or a short-lease holding: a single split system at $2,800 to $4,500 satisfies the standard and is the sensible spend. Do not put a $13,000 system into a property whose rent will not move to pay for it.
- All-electric or no reticulated gas, common on outer blocks: a cold-climate reverse-cycle unit, and it must be cold-climate rated or it will lose output exactly when a Ballarat July needs it.
A worked example, Sebastopol.
A three-bedroom 1970s brick-veneer investment property in Sebastopol, around 130m², on natural gas, with a 25-year-old open-flued space heater in the lounge. The CO test failed on a cracked heat exchanger, so the unit had to go regardless. Replaced with a 6-star ducted gas furnace, nine outlets, a return-air grille and a simple 7-day controller, old unit removed and disposed of, gas compliance certificate issued. $9,850 installed. A basic controller was deliberate: a fancy app-based unit in a rental is a warranty call waiting to happen. Zoning was skipped for the same reason, though our zoning page explains where it does pay.
Deductions, depreciation and a warning.
Broadly, repairing an existing system is treated differently from installing a new one. A repair to a heater already in the property is usually deductible in the year you spend the money. A brand new ducted system is capital plant and equipment, depreciated across its effective life, which for ducted gas heating is commonly around twenty years. That is general information and not tax advice. Your accountant needs to look at your actual circumstances before you rely on any of it, and the difference between a repair and a capital improvement is exactly where people get it wrong.
The other warning is on the quote itself. Ask for the unit make and model, the MJ/h or kW capacity, the star rating, the outlet count and whether gas compliance and CO testing are included. A cheap headline price for a rental usually hides an undersized unit, and undersized in Ballarat means a heater running flat out and never getting there on a one degree morning. Our cost guide breaks the numbers down properly, and if you are weighing gas against electric the gas vs reverse cycle guide compares running costs for real Ballarat tariffs.
Where we work.
Get a landlord quote for your Ballarat rental.
Compliance-aware advice, fixed-price written quote, gas compliance and CO testing included.