Plumber Boya

Boya WA 6056, Shire of Mundaring. About 22 km east of the Perth CBD.

Boya sits on the Darling Scarp in the Shire of Mundaring, on the south side of Greenmount Hill. Its name is the Noongar word for stone, and the locality was built around blue stone quarrying. For a plumber that is the whole story: rock close to the surface makes any excavation slow and expensive, blocks are steep and irregular, and houses here were designed around difficult terrain so service runs rarely take the direct route you would expect.

• Rock close to the surfaceBoya is quarry country and the stone is shallow. Trenching for a new drain, a soak well or a water line is slow, sometimes needs breaking rather than digging, and costs accordingly. We look at the ground before quoting rather than giving a price that has to be revised once we start.
• Steep and irregular blocksThe housing here is unusually varied because builders had to work around the terrain. Water and sewer runs follow awkward routes as a result, so a wet patch is often a long way from the actual leak. We locate and camera the pipework before excavating, because speculative digging into rock gets expensive very quickly.
• Gradient that moves stormwater fastOn a steep block water arrives quickly and leaves little time to soak away, and it collects on whatever sits below. Drainage here has to be sized for runoff coming from uphill rather than only for the rain landing on your own roof.
• On the edge of national park and quarry landBoya adjoins Greenmount National Park and the Hudman Road Quarry, and serious bushfires have reached the area from both. Reliable water supply and pressure matter more in that setting, and it is worth knowing your supply works before a summer you need it.