Plumber Blackett, NSW 2770
Blackett is one of the small estate suburbs laid out north of Mount Druitt in the late 1960s and early 70s, alongside Emerton, Dharruk, Whalan and Tregear. It is compact and residential, with local shops and a school in the middle, Luxford Road on one edge and Mount Druitt Hospital and Westfield close by. Because almost every house went up in the same few years, the same plumbing failures arrive at the same time street by street.
What usually goes wrong in Blackett
- Original galvanised water lines rusting through inside walls and under floors, with pressure dropping to a trickle
- Shared sewer lines through attached duplexes blocking both homes at once and surcharging the lowest gully
- Earthenware sewers cracked at the joints by clay movement and blocked with roots from estate street trees
- Original cisterns, tap sets and stop cocks seizing or leaking in homes that were never fully renovated
- Electric hot water tanks in laundries and on outside walls failing after decades of summer heat
Local notes from the plumbers
Blackett is a suburb where almost every house has the same pipework of the same age. The Housing Commission built the estate in a few years around 1970 on Cumberland Plain clay, with galvanised water lines, earthenware sewer and one drainage run shared between the two halves of each duplex. Fifty-odd years on, the galvanised pipe has rusted from the inside, so the first symptom is low pressure and brown water and the last is a split behind the laundry wall. The earthenware has cracked at the joints as the clay has swelled and shrunk, and the street trees planted with the estate have roots in the line. Because duplexes share drainage, a blockage in one home surcharges the neighbour's gully, and it takes a camera to show which side the break is on and who is responsible. Homes that were sold and renovated usually got new bathrooms on old pipe, so leaks show up behind fresh tiles. Hot water tanks in laundries are on their second or third replacement. The blocks are flat and small, drain slowly and hold water after a summer storm.
Housing in Blackett
Almost entirely 1960s and 70s Housing Commission stock: single-storey fibro and brick veneer cottages, attached duplexes and small townhouse rows on compact blocks laid out in crescents and cul-de-sacs, with many homes now privately owned, extended or rebuilt, and a scattering of newer duplexes on the larger corner blocks.
