Plumber Highgate

Highgate WA 6003, City of Vincent. About 2 km north-east of the Perth CBD.

Highgate sits immediately north of the Perth CBD within the City of Vincent, and at just 0.4 square kilometres it is the smallest suburb in the metropolitan region. It was named after the village of Highgate in Hawkhurst, Kent. Highgate Primary School is the second oldest government primary school in Western Australia, and the suburb's Art Deco Lincoln Street Vent is a surviving piece of Perth's original sewerage infrastructure.

• The Lincoln Street Vent, a disused sewerage vent from 1935The Art Deco tower on Lincoln Street was built in 1935 to vent Perth's early deep sewerage system. It is a reminder that the sewer mains under Highgate are among the oldest in the state, and old mains mean old earthenware house connections joining them. Those joints are where roots get in, and they are the blockages we clear here most often.
• The smallest suburb in the Perth metropolitan areaHighgate covers 0.4 square kilometres, so blocks are narrow, buildings sit close to boundaries and there is very little room to work. Getting equipment to a rear drain often means access through the house or from a shared right of way, and we plan that before quoting rather than discovering it on the day.
• Victorian and Federation housing converted into flatsMany of the large old houses here have been divided into several dwellings. The water service, sewer connection and often the hot water unit were sized for one household and now carry three or four, which shows up as poor pressure and hot water that runs out. Upgrading the service is usually the real fix.
• Heritage fabric that limits how work can be doneA great deal of Highgate's building stock is protected or retained, so pipework cannot simply be chased through an original wall. We route replacements through subfloors, roof spaces and existing penetrations, which takes longer to plan and saves the owner a restoration bill.