Plumber Cambridge Park, NSW 2747
Cambridge Park is a quiet, flat residential suburb north of the railway between Penrith and Werrington, built mostly in the 1950s and 60s with fibro and brick veneer on generous blocks. It is now going through the same change as the rest of the older Nepean, with granny flats, duplexes and knock-down rebuilds appearing along its wide streets. Richmond Road and the Great Western Highway sit either side, and Werrington Creek carries the runoff toward South Creek.
What usually goes wrong in Cambridge Park
- Earthenware sewers on the flat clay holding water, cracking at joints and blocking with roots
- Original galvanised water lines in 1950s fibro corroding and dropping the pressure at every tap
- Granny flats and duplexes overloading sewer lines that were laid for a single small cottage
- Stormwater sitting on flat yards and surcharging gullies in the streets that drain to Werrington Creek
- Electric storage hot water tanks in old laundries and on side walls failing in the summer heat
Local notes from the plumbers
Cambridge Park is flat, old and changing, which is a description of its plumbing too. The original fibro and brick veneer homes from the 1950s and 60s were laid on Cumberland Plain clay with earthenware sewers and, in the earliest streets, galvanised water lines. Sixty years on, the galvanised is corroded to the point where the pressure at the kitchen tap is a trickle, and the earthenware has cracked at the joints as the clay moved through wet and dry years, so roots from the old gums, jacarandas and camphor laurels are a constant. Because the ground is so flat, sewer lines here have little fall and tend to hold water even without roots, which is why some houses block over and over. The same flatness shows up in storms: yards puddle, grates overflow and gullies surcharge in the streets that drain toward Werrington Creek. The wide blocks are being split into duplexes or gaining a granny flat, and a second dwelling plumbed into a sixty-year-old sewer line is a common cause of the next blockage. Hot water is mostly electric storage, ageing fast in the Penrith heat.
Housing in Cambridge Park
Single-storey fibro and brick veneer homes from the 1950s, 60s and 70s on flat blocks north of the railway, a few 1950s weatherboard cottages, some walk-up units and townhouses near the Great Western Highway and Richmond Road, and duplexes and granny flats replacing older houses street by street.
