Melbourne
Blocked, burst or leaking in Melbourne?
Blocked drains, burst pipes and leaks in the Melbourne CBD, from the rear lanes of the grid to the river edge, passed to a licensed plumber day and night.
Plumbing in Melbourne
Towers on top of a century-old sewer
In the city centre a plumbing job is often inside an apartment tower, an office, a shop or a restaurant rather than a house. A blocked waste there often sits in a common stack or a shared branch that serves many floors, so the building manager or owners corporation is brought in before the plumber opens anything, and whether the fault is in one tenancy or the whole riser is settled first.
Under the street, the grid's sewers are more than a century old, and Greater Western Water has been relining the sewer pipeline under parts of the CBD as it renews them. A relined main can leave a property junction sitting differently from the old drawings, so a camera goes down the building's branch to the main before anyone blames the corporation for a blockage.
Getting gear to the job is its own question. By the middle of the nineteenth century the grid had grown 80 named lanes and 112 rights-of-way, many of them private, and plenty of buildings are still serviced from the back. Lane width and who owns the lane decide whether a jetter truck or camera van can reach the drain.
Jobs in Melbourne
Stacks, mains and back lanes
Commercial plumbing
Offices, shops, restaurants and strata towers, with building manager access arranged before the visit.
Blocked drains
Common stacks and shared branches in towers, traced to one floor or one tenancy where possible.
CCTV drain inspection
A camera from the building to the relined main, to show which side of the junction the fault is on.
What it costs: hot water replacement cost, gutter replacement cost, toilet installation cost
Melbourne questions
Flood kerbs, street trees and listed facades
Why does a CBD basement flood when the drains look clear?
Low ground near the river sits at the bottom of a large city catchment, and council treats flooding there as a serious issue. On one main street an upgrade was redesigned to retain the existing stepped kerb after updated flood modelling, so a stormwater outlet at the kerb needs council consent and backflow protection is checked before a private drain is blamed.
Can a tree pit beside the kerb block a new connection?
It can. Where council has replaced damaged London planes, the new streetscape includes structural soil and soaker pits that feed an infiltration trench beside the kerb. Those are located before a property connection is dug up, and older joints near the trees are checked for roots.
Does a heritage listing affect pipework on a city building?
Possibly, even where a building was not protected a few years ago. The Hoddle Grid Heritage Review recommended 126 individual places and five precincts for heritage overlays, so new external pipework or downpipes on a street facade are checked against the overlay, which can add a permit and lead time.
Who fixes a blocked sewer past the building boundary?
Greater Western Water owns the CBD sewer mains, so a blockage in the main is reported to the corporation. A new connection to those old mains also needs its consent before the plumber starts.
