Plumber Cardiff South

Plumbing in Cardiff South comes down to old pipe: galvanised steel water services and post-war clay sewers under the fibro cottages of the numbered streets. Cardiff South sits beside Macquarie Hills, and Macquarie Hills Plumbing Co covers it on the same run, with a fixed figure before any work starts.

Cottages with their first pipes still in the ground. This suburb grew out of three older localities, including Evelien and Coalbrook, and its numbered street names survive from the workers' housing lots cut here generations back. Many of the fibro and weatherboard cottages still run the galvanised steel water service they were built with, and that pipe rusts from the inside long before it shows on the outside.

Clay sewers under long backyards. The earthenware sewer runs beneath these yards went down after the war, and sixty-odd years of ground movement has worked the joints apart. Mature gardens and the creek corridor give roots an easy path to the moisture inside, so a line that chokes once tends to choke again.

Low blocks take the runoff. At the last census, 1,110 homes stood here and 89.6 per cent were detached houses, on ground that undulates down to Winding Creek. The lowest blocks cop uphill runoff in cloudbursts, and older yard gullies pond when the catchment surcharges.