Plumber Doonside, NSW 2767
Doonside is a quiet, flat post-war suburb between Blacktown and Rooty Hill, best known for Featherdale wildlife park and its position on the edge of the Western Sydney Parklands and Sydney Zoo. Most of its housing is 1950s to 70s fibro and brick veneer, with public housing duplexes on the northern side and Bells Creek running through toward Eastern Creek. The Great Western Highway, M4 and Rooty Hill Road give access from every direction.
What usually goes wrong in Doonside
- Earthenware sewers under fibro cottages cracked by clay movement and full of eucalypt and liquidambar roots
- Shared drainage in Housing Commission duplexes blocking for both households at once
- Galvanised water lines in unrenovated 1950s homes rusting through and losing pressure
- Outdoor hot water tanks and PVC pipework on sun-exposed walls failing after long hot summers
- Stormwater and overflow gully surcharge on the low ground near Bells Creek and Eastern Creek after storms
Local notes from the plumbers
Doonside has the same clay as Blacktown and older housing than most of it, so the sewer calls are constant. Fibro cottages from the 1950s sit on earthenware lines that have been through seventy cycles of the ground swelling and shrinking, and the eucalypts and liquidambars along the older streets have roots in every open joint. The brick veneer homes that followed in the 1960s and 70s are not much better underground, and a good number still run galvanised water lines that have rusted down to a trickle at the kitchen tap. The Housing Commission duplexes and townhouse rows on the northern side share drainage, so one blocked line puts two or three households out at once and the first call usually comes from whoever has the lowest floor waste. Hot water tanks and PVC on the western and northern walls of these houses take the full summer sun, and heat is what finishes them. Bells Creek runs through the suburb toward Eastern Creek and rises fast in a thunderstorm, so the streets along it see stormwater pooling and overflow gullies surcharging.
Housing in Doonside
1950s and 60s fibro cottages and 1960s and 70s brick veneer homes on flat blocks between the railway and Rooty Hill Road, with 1970s Housing Commission duplexes and townhouse rows on the northern side, a scattering of 1980s brick homes, and newer duplexes replacing fibro on the larger blocks.
