Plumber Auburn, NSW 2144
Auburn is one of the most densely populated and most multicultural suburbs in Sydney, with a busy shopping and restaurant strip along Auburn Road, walk-up unit blocks on almost every street near the station, newer towers in the centre and industrial land stretching east to Silverwater. The Auburn Botanic Gardens and Duck River parklands sit on the western edge. Parramatta Road and the M4 run along the northern boundary.
What usually goes wrong in Auburn
- Shared stacks in 1960s walk-up unit blocks blocked with cooking oil and backing up into ground-floor units
- Pinhole leaks in ageing copper risers and flexible hose bursts in unrenovated flats
- Grease trap and floor waste overflows in the restaurants and food shops along Auburn Road
- Earthenware sewers under old cottages near Duck River cracked at the joints and root-bound
- Stormwater flooding and sewer surcharge on the low streets beside Duck River after summer storms
Local notes from the plumbers
Auburn is unit-block country, and the plumbing follows. The 1960s and 70s red-brick walk-ups near the station were built with one sewer stack per six or nine flats, and cooking oil from busy kitchens closes those stacks regularly; the ground-floor unit is always the one that floods. Copper risers of the same age have reached pinhole stage, so a wet ceiling in one flat often traces to a pipe inside the wall of the flat above. Flexible hoses in unrenovated units split without warning. The food shops and restaurants along Auburn Road keep a plumber busy with grease traps, blocked floor wastes and hot water units that cannot meet demand at peak hours. On the western edge the older cottages toward the Duck River and the Botanic Gardens still have earthenware sewers under mature figs and plane trees, and the low streets along the river flood in a summer thunderstorm, with sewer surcharge through overflow gullies following soon after. The industrial precinct east of the centre adds burst mains, trade waste and backflow work. Parramatta Road, Rawson Street and the M4 are the routes in and out.
Housing in Auburn
Dense and mixed: 1960s and 70s three-storey red-brick unit blocks on most streets near the station, Federation and interwar cottages toward Parramatta Road and the Duck River, 2010s apartment towers around the town centre, and a large light industrial precinct on the eastern side toward Silverwater.
