Plumber Greenmount

Greenmount WA 6056, Shire of Mundaring. About 21 km east of the Perth CBD.

Greenmount sits on the edge of the Darling Scarp in the Shire of Mundaring, and Greenmount Hill is the main ascent from the Swan Coastal Plain into the hills. For a plumber the gradient is the defining feature. Water moves fast across sloping ground and collects on the blocks below rather than soaking in, so drainage here is a runoff problem rather than a soakage one. There is also rock through the area, which makes excavation slower than on the plain.

• Built on the face of the scarpThe slope means stormwater runs rather than soaks. A soak well sized as though the block were flat will overflow, because water arrives faster than it can disperse. Drainage here needs to be designed to catch and carry runoff, which is a different job to the soakage work done down on the plain.
• Runoff arriving from uphillA downhill property carries water shed by everything above it. That is why two neighbours on the same street can have completely different drainage problems, and why we look at what is upslope of a block before quoting rather than only at the block itself.
• Rock through the hillsideExcavation on the scarp regularly hits rock, which makes trenching for drains and water lines slower and more expensive than the same job on sand. We price it on the ground rather than a flat rate, and we say so before starting.
• The main route into the hillsGreat Eastern Highway climbs through Greenmount, which is the road we use to reach the whole Mundaring area. That means we are through here constantly and can give a realistic arrival time for an after-hours call rather than a vague window.