Plumber Willagee

Willagee WA 6156, City of Melville. About 15 km south-west of the Perth CBD.

Willagee sits about fifteen kilometres south-south-west of the Perth CBD in the City of Melville, built from 1951 as a State Housing Commission estate for workers in Fremantle's industrial area, on land named for a swamp since reclaimed. Much of the original stock is timber housing raised on stumps, and a long redevelopment programme is steadily replacing it. For a plumber that means accessible but very old sub-floor pipework, and new builds connecting into seventy-year-old mains.

• Timber houses raised on stumpsUnlike slab-on-ground housing, the original Willagee cottages have their pipework under a suspended floor. That makes a leak far easier to find and repair than cutting concrete, but it also means seventy-year-old pipe is still sitting there, exposed to everything under the house.
• Post-war services at the end of their lifeThis is 1950s stock and its drainage and pipework are the originals in many houses. Pressure drops, discoloured water and repeated leaks in an original Willagee house point at the pipe itself rather than the fitting on the end of it.
• Redevelopment replacing the estateNew dwellings are steadily going up on the old lots, each needing its own water meter and sewer connection into mains laid for modest post-war cottages. Capacity at those connections is a real question rather than a formality.
• Reclaimed swamp groundThe suburb takes its name from a swamp that was filled, and parts of the low ground still hold water through winter. Soakage on those blocks performs worse than the surrounding sand suggests it should.