Plumber Attadale

Attadale WA 6156, City of Melville. About 11 km south-west of the Perth CBD.

Attadale occupies a stretch of the southern Swan River foreshore about eleven kilometres south-west of the Perth CBD in the City of Melville, the first part of the old Melville Water Park Estate to be subdivided. Its housing ranges from early last century to brand-new riverfront rebuilds. For a plumber that means a high water table on the low blocks, new large homes connecting into older services, and original drainage under the houses not yet replaced.

• Low foreshore ground along the riverThe blocks nearest the Swan sit low with groundwater close to the surface through winter, and waste lines there have little fall to work with. Soakage performs poorly in the wet season, which is a design constraint rather than a blockage.
• Rebuilds on century-old lotsA new Attadale house typically has several times the fixtures of the one it replaced while connecting into the same water main. Sizing that service at design stage avoids pressure problems that are expensive to fix once the house is finished.
• Housing spanning a full centuryAttadale holds early-1900s houses, post-war homes and new builds on the same streets. Original drainage under the oldest of them is genuinely near the end of its life; a new house's pipework is not, so the same symptom means different work.
• Sandy river ground that shiftsThe soil along the foreshore moves with the water table, and that movement pulls at rigid drainage over time. Displaced joints in older Attadale lines are often ground movement rather than roots, and the repair is a different one.