Plumber Cardup

Cardup WA 6122, Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale. About 38 km south-east of the Perth CBD.

Cardup is a small rural locality in the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale about thirty-eight kilometres south-east of the Perth CBD, north of Mundijong and south of Byford, with Cardup Brook running through it. It is clay country, quarried here for a long time, on large unsewered holdings. For a plumber that means septic systems, bores and pumps as the standard work, heavy soil that resists soakage, and low ground near the brook that stays wet through winter.

• Heavy clay that will not soakCardup is clay country, and water does not disappear into it the way it does on the sand plain. Soak wells here fill and stay full, so stormwater and leach drainage need a proper outlet rather than more soakage capacity.
• Unsewered blocks on septic systemsEvery property here runs a septic tank and leach drains. In clay ground those drains have less capacity than the same system would on sand, which makes scheduled pumping out more important, not less.
• Low ground along Cardup BrookThe land either side of the brook sits low and holds water through winter. A leach drain or a soak well on that ground can be saturated in July while working fine in February, which is a seasonal design problem rather than a fault.
• Bores, tanks and long private runsWater on a Cardup block comes from a bore or tanks, so the pump, the pressure vessel and the filtration are what fail. The runs between supply and house are long, and a leak in one surfaces well away from the break.