Plumber Revesby, NSW 2212
Revesby is a large post-war suburb on the Bankstown line south of the Hume Highway, running from the station and the Selems Parade shops down through Revesby Heights to the Georges River. It is mostly 1950s and 60s brick and fibro on clay blocks, now filling in with duplexes, granny flats and apartments near the station. The River Road, Canterbury Road and the M5 at Milperra are the main routes, and the streets fall toward Salt Pan Creek and the river.
What usually goes wrong in Revesby
- Earthenware sewers under 1950s-60s homes cracked on clay and blocked with roots from camphor laurels and gums
- Pinhole leaks in sixty-year-old copper showing as damp walls, warm floor patches or a rising water bill
- Granny flats and duplexes overloading original sewer lines laid for one post-war family
- Stormwater rushing down the sloping streets of Revesby Heights toward the Georges River and Salt Pan Creek
- Flexible hoses and shared stacks failing in the unit blocks and new apartments around the station
Local notes from the plumbers
Revesby was built out in the 1950s and 60s, and most of its sewers and water lines are still the originals. The earthenware sewer lines were laid in Cumberland Plain clay that swells after a wet winter and shrinks in a dry summer, and after sixty years the joints have opened enough for the camphor laurels, gums and jacarandas along the streets to grow in; blocked drains in spring are the most common call. Copper from the same era is at pinhole age, and a leak under the slab or inside a wall often shows first as a water bill nobody can explain. A large number of blocks now carry a granny flat or have become a duplex pair, and the extra bathrooms feed into that same old sewer line. The suburb slopes from the station down through Revesby Heights to the Georges River, so a summer storm sends stormwater down the hill fast and the low streets near Salt Pan Creek and the river flats see gullies surcharge; the March 2022 flood on the Georges River reached the low ground at Milperra next door.
Housing in Revesby
Brick and fibro homes from the 1950s and 60s on the grid of streets either side of the railway, later 1970s brick veneer toward Revesby Heights and the river, a cluster of 1960s-70s unit blocks and newer apartment buildings around Revesby station and the Selems Parade shops, plus duplexes and granny flats on the older blocks.
