Blocked Drains in Cromer, Cleared Properly

This suburb started out as Dee Why West, before it was renamed in 1940 after the golf links that still borders Narrabeen Lagoon.

It's a quieter, leafier suburb than most of its neighbours, built mainly through the post-war decades into the 1960s and 70s.

Detached brick-veneer and fibro family homes climb a sandstone ridge that slopes down toward the lagoon, and the drains laid under that build-out have had seventy-odd years to show their age.

Two issues dominate.

Established gardens along streets like Cromer Road and Fisher Road North have grown mature enough that their root systems now reach the earthenware drains still running under most blocks here.

That's the pipe material itself, not just the roots.

Homes here were laid with earthenware drainage rather than modern PVC, and it cracks at the joints as decades pass, opening a way in for roots and somewhere for silt to settle.

Once a joint opens even slightly, both problems compound each other.

A cracked earthenware pipe with roots already through it isn't a five-minute job.

The camera goes through first so we're never guessing at what's underground, then it's blocked drain repair for genuine pipe failure, or drain cleaning where build-up is all we're dealing with.

Two more patterns show up regularly, both tied to the ridge the suburb sits on.

Stormwater surcharge is the first.

The whole suburb drains into the Narrabeen Lagoon catchment, so heavy rain overloads pits and stormwater lines on the lower-lying stretches faster than older infrastructure was built to handle.

Slope drainage is the second, and it's really the same hill causing trouble from a different angle.

Steep falls from the ridge concentrate runoff and silt in the downhill drainage runs after storms, so a line that copes fine most of the year can still choke after a heavy one.

Both get the same blocked stormwater treatment: clear it, then check the fall and the pipe condition so it doesn't happen again next storm.

It's not only houses out here, either.

The small industrial pocket off South Creek Road runs commercial drainage that sees heavier, more constant use than a family home ever does, and those lines block on a different timetable.

We handle both the same way: camera first, fixed price, no assumption that a workshop line and a kitchen line fail for the same reason.

Ask around this pocket of the council area and you'll find plenty of houses we've already been to, because Narraweena is home turf and this ridge is a regular stop on the way through.

The sandstone ridge and its fall toward Narrabeen Lagoon aren't a mystery to us by the time we knock.

Two guarantees make that count for something rather than just sound good: Master Plumber accreditation on every job, and a repair that fails gets fixed again for nothing, no argument.