Plumber Gooseberry Hill

Gooseberry Hill WA 6076, City of Kalamunda. About 23 km east of the Perth CBD.

Gooseberry Hill is a suburb in the City of Kalamunda at the highest point south of where the Helena River leaves the Darling Scarp for the coastal plain. It contains Gooseberry Hill National Park and adjoins Statham's Quarry to the north-west. For a plumber the combination that matters is steep blocks and shallow rock: excavation is slower and more expensive than on the plain, and on a slope a leak surfaces a long way from its source, so locating comes before digging.

• Rock close to the surfaceQuarry country runs through this part of the scarp and stone sits shallow. Trenching for a drain, a soak well or a water line is slower here and sometimes has to be broken rather than dug, so we look at the ground before quoting rather than revising a price once we start.
• Steep blocks where leaks travelOn a slope water follows the ground rather than surfacing where it escaped, so a wet patch in a Gooseberry Hill yard is often well below the actual fault. We locate and camera before excavating, because speculative digging into rock gets expensive very quickly.
• National park on the boundaryGooseberry Hill National Park adjoins the housing, and mature natives along that edge send roots into the joints of older drainage on the properties beside it. Those are the blocks we return to most often for blocked drains.
• Runoff heading downhillBeing at the high point means water leaves these blocks fast and arrives on whatever sits below. Drainage here is about catching and carrying runoff rather than soaking it away, which is the opposite of how it works on the sandy plain.