Box Hill
Blocked, burst or leaking in Box Hill?
Blocked drains, burst pipes and leaks in Box Hill, from the towers by the station to the interwar streets, passed to a licensed plumber day and night.
Plumbing in Box Hill
Apartments, interwar houses and weathered mudstone
At the last Census separate houses were only 22.0 percent of Box Hill's occupied homes, so most drains serve apartments, townhouses and units. On a shared site the contact is usually a building manager, and machinery often goes in through a basement rather than a side gate.
Housing came in a burst between 1923 and 1926, boosted by railway electrification. Houses from that peak still carry earthenware drains and galvanised water pipe, so pressure complaints usually end in a full replacement rather than a patch.
Whitehorse describes the ground as gently folded marine mudstones, turbiditic sandstones and mass-flow conglomerates, weathering to clay. That clay moves with the seasons, so older drains crack at the joints and sag, and a camera goes in before relining.
Jobs in Box Hill
Strata drains, meters and high rise
Blocked drains
Shared sewer branches under apartment buildings, and old clay lines in the interwar streets.
Leak detection
Finding which side of the meter a leak sits on before anything is opened.
Commercial plumbing
Strata and high rise work, with towers of up to forty storeys high proposed for Box Hill needing pumps and shared stacks.
What it costs: hot water replacement cost, gutter replacement cost, toilet installation cost
Box Hill questions
Meters, drainage permits and protected ground
Who pays to fix a leak before the meter?
Yarra Valley Water says that in most cases it repairs everything on the road side of the meter. From the meter to the house is the owner's job, and on unit sites the owners corporation is responsible past the main meter.
Does a like for like stormwater repair still need council consent?
In Whitehorse it does. Consent is needed to connect to the council stormwater network, and this includes repairs to broken pipes, with processing time and a security deposit for works on council land.
Why are pipes older in central Box Hill than to the north and south?
By the end of the Second World War, Box Hill was suburbanised, but Box Hill South and North were comparatively undeveloped. The interwar stock sits in Box Hill proper, so corroded galvanised pipe and cracked clay turn up there sooner.
Can a drain be trenched through Box Hill Gardens?
Not without Heritage Victoria. The gardens are an archaeological site with low-moderate archaeological potential, so trenching for a drain or stormwater line there needs consent first.
