Plumber Hilton

Hilton WA 6163, City of Fremantle. About 17 km south-west of the Perth CBD.

Hilton sits about seventeen kilometres south-west of the Perth CBD in the City of Fremantle, built after the Second World War under a state garden-suburb scheme that gave it wide verges, large blocks and single detached houses. The stock is a mix of weatherboard, fibro and brick, much of it now being renewed. For a plumber that means suspended timber floors with accessible but very old pipework, long runs across big blocks, and new builds connecting into post-war mains.

• Weatherboard and fibro houses on stumpsUnlike slab-on-ground housing, the original Hilton cottages carry their pipework under a suspended floor. A leak there is far cheaper to find and repair than one under concrete, but it is also seventy-year-old pipe still sitting where it was first laid.
• Garden-suburb blocks and long service runsWide verges and large blocks mean the run between the meter at the boundary and the house is longer than in a modern subdivision. A leak in that run can surface well away from the break, so locating it beats digging up a big lawn.
• Fibro and what it means for renovation workOlder fibro walls and eaves need handling correctly when pipework is opened up behind them. We plan bathroom and laundry work in these houses around that rather than discovering it once a wall is cut.
• Urban renewal replacing the stockNew dwellings are steadily going up on the old Hilton lots, each needing its own water meter and sewer connection into mains laid for modest post-war houses. Capacity at those connections is a real question rather than a formality.