Docklands
Blocked, burst or leaking in Docklands?
Blocked drains, burst pipes and leaks in Docklands, from Victoria Harbour to Batmans Hill, passed to a licensed plumber day and night.
Plumbing in Docklands
Apartment stacks on reclaimed marsh
City of Melbourne reports that almost every Docklands home is in flats or apartments with three or more storeys. Nearly every job is inside a building with an owners corporation and a building manager, and the first question is whether the fault sits in one apartment's line or in a common stack.
The buildings are young. Developers were short-listed for five Docklands precincts in the late nineties, so the pipework is likely to be PVC, copper or plastic rather than clay, and leaks and blockages tend to come from joints, stacks and fittings.
Victorian Places records that most of the land was originally marsh, known as Batman's lagoon, filled as the rail goods yards grew west. Reclaimed ground can settle unevenly, so a service crossing it may sag or pull apart at a joint.
Jobs in Docklands
Common stacks and young pipework
Commercial plumbing
Strata towers, offices and waterfront venues, with building manager access booked first.
Leak detection
A leak traced inside an apartment building before a wall or ceiling is opened.
Blocked drains
Stacks and branches in flats or apartments with three or more storeys, sorted floor by floor.
What it costs: hot water replacement cost, gutter replacement cost, toilet installation cost
Docklands questions
Old port ground and public realm rules
What happens if a service under Docklands has to be dug up?
The ground may hold old industrial fill. eMelbourne lists decontamination of polluted land among the aims of turning the port and rail land into a suburb, so spoil may need testing and proper disposal, which adds time and cost.
Can the footpath or promenade be opened for a drain repair?
Only to council's rules. Any service work reaching into a street, promenade or plaza must be put back to the Docklands Design and Construction Standards, which are a statutory requirement under a council local law, so those are checked before anything is cut.
Why does a drain keep blocking at the same spot?
Settled ground is one cause on reclaimed land, a dip in the line where solids collect. A camera finds the sag before any repair is priced.
