Start with the two rules that frame everything. Under the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019, Regulation 7, the landlord must provide a washing machine — and a dryer where there is no private garden or yard — and keep it in good working order; maintenance rests with the landlord. And on deposits, the RTB position is clear in principle: fair wear and tear cannot be charged to a tenant's deposit. A machine that wears out in normal use is the landlord's cost. What follows is how that principle lands on real faults — we see all of these, from both sides of the argument.
What Counts as Wear and Tear
- A pump dying after years of service. Pumps are wear parts. A pump that fails at year seven of ordinary family washing has simply worn out.
- Motor brushes worn down. Carbon brushes are designed to wear; a machine that stops spinning because the brushes are spent is a maintenance job, not damage.
- An element furred up by hard water. In areas normally supplied by Bog of the Ring (around 336 mg/L) or Leixlip (around 200 mg/L), limescale builds on elements as a fact of the water, not of the tenant. South Dublin supplies like Ballymore Eustace (around 50 mg/L) fur far slower — but the cause is the supply, never the user.
- A door seal perishing with age. Rubber ages, splits and grows mould in damp homes despite reasonable care. That is age, not abuse.
- Belts stretching, bearings wearing, boards failing with age — the ordinary end-of-life failures of a working machine.
What Counts as Misuse or Tenant Damage
- Foreign objects left in pockets — coins, screws, hair grips and bra wires that escape into the pump or between the drums. A pump jammed solid with change, or a drum punctured by a bra wire, did not wear out; it was damaged, and it can fairly be charged.
- Chronic overloading. Bearings have a working life, but bearings split early on a machine habitually stuffed past capacity tell their own story — the failure pattern is visibly different from age.
- A door forced against the interlock — snapped handles and broken door catches from yanking a locked door are impact damage, not wear.
- Flooding from a leak that was never reported. A hose weeping for months does damage no landlord could prevent, because nobody told them. Tenants are expected to report faults promptly; a leak left in silence, rotting a floor, is the grey case that most often goes against the tenant.
- Wrong detergent abuse — handwash powder or washing-up liquid run repeatedly, foaming the machine out and damaging seals and boards.
The Grey Middle — and How It Gets Settled
Plenty of cases sit between the two lists: a bearing that fails at five years in a house of six adults, a seal that is both old and badly kept. Arguments about those go in circles because both sides are guessing at the cause. What settles it — with letting agents and at the RTB alike — is evidence: a written engineer report that states, in plain words, what failed and why. That is a normal part of our job. Our reports name the cause as we found it — wear consistent with age and normal use, or damage consistent with a foreign object, overloading or a forced door — and that one document is usually what the deposit decision turns on. The repair itself runs on our standard terms whoever pays: €79 call-out credited in full, most repairs €149–€249, majors €279–€420, fixed written price before work. Prices checked November 2026.
Practical Steps for Both Sides
Tenants: report faults early, in writing, and keep the message. Empty pockets, do not overload, and leave the door ajar — the small habits that keep you clearly on the wear-and-tear side of the line. Photograph the machine's condition when you move in, the same as you would the walls and floors; a dated photo of a clean filter and an intact seal is worth more in a dispute than an hour of arguing about it. Landlords and agents: keep the invoices and the engineer reports from every repair; a paper trail of maintenance is what wins the argument that a failure was damage rather than neglect. Note the machine's age and model in the inventory at the start of the tenancy too — a pump failing on a nine-year-old machine reads very differently from the same failure on a two-year-old one, and the inventory is what proves which it was. Both sides will find the wider picture on our landlord hub, the who-pays page and our page for letting agents and property managers — and the cost guide shows what each fault should cost before anyone argues about who pays it. Ring 645 465-6305 to book a visit or a report.
Related pages
- Landlord Washing Machine Repair Dublin
- Who Pays in a Rented House?
- Letting Agents & Property Managers
- What a Repair Costs in Dublin
Sources
- Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019 (S.I. No. 137/2019), Irish Statute Book — the full text of the regulations, including the Regulation 7 laundry duty
- Citizens Information — Minimum standards for rented homes — the same standards explained in plain English
