Plumber Tapping

Tapping WA 6065, City of Wanneroo. About 24 km north of the Perth CBD.

Tapping is a suburb about twenty-four kilometres north of the Perth CBD in the City of Wanneroo, bounded by Joondalup Drive, Pinjar Road, Conti Road and Wanneroo Road. It came into being as a subdivision of Wanneroo in the early 1990s and grew from roughly two hundred residents in 2001 to nearly nine thousand by 2011, built on land previously used for farming and horticulture. For a plumber that concentrated growth is the key fact: almost the whole suburb shares a build date and therefore a maintenance timetable.

• Almost the whole suburb built in one windowTapping went from a couple of hundred residents to nearly nine thousand in a decade. That means the hot water units, cisterns and tapware fitted across the suburb are reaching the end of their first life at the same time, so a neighbour's failure is a fair warning about your own.
• Fittings, not pipework, at end of lifeThe water and sewer pipework in a Tapping home is recent enough to have decades left. Anyone quoting a full replumb in this suburb is quoting work the house does not need, and we will tell you that rather than agreeing with it.
• Built on former farming and horticultural landThe land here was farmed and used for horticulture before subdivision. Old bores, irrigation lines and drainage were not always removed, and they turn up during excavation for a pool or an extension, so we locate before anything is dug.
• A young population in family housingTapping's median age is around thirty and households tend to be large. A hot water unit sized to a builder's standard specification will run out for a family of five regardless of its condition, and sizing the replacement properly is the only thing that fixes it.