Plumber Bankstown, NSW 2200
Bankstown is the centre of Canterbury-Bankstown and one of the busiest suburbs in south-west Sydney, with Bankstown Central, the station on the Metro conversion, Bankstown Hospital, a large restaurant and food precinct and thousands of units within walking distance of the CBD. Around the core the streets are 1950s and 60s houses on clay blocks, increasingly split into duplexes and granny flats. The Hume Highway, Stacey Street and Canterbury Road carry the traffic.
What usually goes wrong in Bankstown
- Burst flexible hoses in walk-up units and apartment towers sending water into the apartment below
- Shared sewer stacks in 1960s-70s unit blocks blocking with grease, wipes and years of build-up
- Earthenware sewers under 1950s homes cracked on clay and blocked with roots from camphor laurels and street trees
- Grease and blocked floor wastes in restaurants, cafes and food shops around Bankstown Central and the station
- Granny flats and duplexes plumbed into original sewer lines never sized for two or three households
Local notes from the plumbers
Bankstown is the densest suburb in the region, and the plumbing follows that density. The 1960s and 70s red-brick walk-up unit blocks around Bankstown Central and Chapel Road have shared sewer stacks, original copper risers and decades of grease and wipes from dozens of kitchens, so a blockage on the ground floor is often a whole building problem and a strata call. The newer apartment towers add the other classic: a braided flexible hose or a unit hot water heater letting go and water arriving through the ceiling of the apartment below. The restaurants and food shops around the CBD keep grease traps and floor wastes busy every weekend. Beyond the centre the streets are 1950s and 60s fibro and brick on Cumberland Plain clay, with earthenware sewers that have cracked at the joints and camphor laurels and jacarandas growing into them; many of those blocks now carry a granny flat or a duplex plumbed into the same old line. In a storm the low ground toward Salt Pan Creek and along the Bankstown Airport side sees gullies surcharge and stormwater back up.
Housing in Bankstown
Three-storey red-brick walk-up unit blocks from the 1960s and 70s around the station and Bankstown Central, apartment towers built since the 2010s along the Metro corridor, 1950s and 60s fibro and brick homes on the surrounding streets, many now duplexes or with a granny flat, and shops, warehouses and commercial premises along the Hume Highway and Stacey Street.
