Plumber Westmead, NSW 2145
Westmead is one of the largest health precincts in Australia, with Westmead Hospital, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Westmead Private and the research institutes drawing thousands of staff and visitors a day. The apartment towers that have gone up around the station house hospital workers and students, while the older streets keep their 1960s unit blocks and pre-war cottages. The light rail connects Westmead to the Parramatta CBD, and the M4 runs along the southern edge.
What usually goes wrong in Westmead
- Flexible hose bursts in new apartment towers flooding through to the unit below and the lift lobby
- Shared stack blockages and worn copper in 1960s walk-up blocks along Hawkesbury Road and Bridge Road
- Hot water outages in strata buildings when central plant, pressure pumps or tempering valves fail
- Sewer surcharge and flooded garages on the streets near Toongabbie Creek in summer storms
- Blocked drains and leaking taps in the medical suites, clinics and short-stay accommodation around the hospitals
Local notes from the plumbers
Westmead is a suburb of strata plumbing. The towers that have gone up around the station and along Hawkesbury Road since the 2010s are full of small apartments rented to hospital staff and students, and the emergency that comes up again and again is a braided flexible hose splitting under a sink or a toilet while the tenant is on a night shift. Water runs for hours before anyone knows, and the repair involves the strata manager, the unit below and sometimes the lift shaft. Central hot water plants and pressure pumps in the same buildings take whole floors offline when they trip. The 1960s and 70s red-brick blocks between the hospitals and the M4 are older and simpler: shared stacks that block, copper risers with pinholes, cisterns running constantly. The pre-war cottages on the western streets toward Wentworthville still have earthenware sewers under liquidambars and camphor laurels. Toongabbie Creek marks the northern edge and rises fast in a summer thunderstorm, so the low streets near it see sewer surcharge through overflow gullies and water in garages. Hawkesbury Road, Bridge Road and the M4 give access from Parramatta.
Housing in Westmead
The Westmead health precinct and its surrounds: 2010s and 2020s apartment towers near Westmead station and Hawkesbury Road, 1960s and 70s three-storey red-brick unit blocks on the streets between the hospitals and the M4, and 1930s to 50s brick and weatherboard cottages on the quieter streets toward Wentworthville and Toongabbie Creek.
