Plumber Yokine

Yokine WA 6060, City of Stirling. About 7 km north of the Perth CBD.

Yokine began as part of a land grant made in 1840 but stayed largely undeveloped until after the Second World War. The streets near the golf course were built by the early 1950s, the southern portions filled rapidly through the 1960s, and the suburb was almost entirely complete by the late 1970s. The name comes from a Nyungar word for dingo, chosen for the suburb's proximity to Dog Swamp.

• Thirty years of building, from the 1950s to the 1970sYokine was not built all at once, so the pipework changes as you move through it. The oldest streets near the golf course still hold galvanised supply lines, while later areas were built on copper. Low pressure and discoloured water almost always trace back to the older material.
• Dog Swamp and the low ground around itThe swamp that gave the suburb its name has been drained and turned into reserve, but the ground around it still sits lower and wetter than the rest of Yokine. Soakage there needs sizing for that rather than assuming the same fall as the higher streets.
• The Western Australian Golf ClubThe course brings a large expanse of mature trees up against residential blocks along its boundary, and those root systems reach the joints in older drainage. Properties backing onto it are the ones we return to most often for blocked drains.
• Seven kilometres from the CBDYokine is close enough to the city that a van is rarely far away, which matters when a burst water pipe in a seventy-year-old home can flood it before anyone gets there. It also means the suburb has been renovated continuously, so the pipework in neighbouring houses is often nothing alike.