Plumber in Melville

Melville was laid out in the 1890s, and in many of its Victorian and Edwardian houses the supply pipework is nearly as old as the walls. Galvanised steel was the pipe of the day. It was run under the suspended timber floors, out along the verandas and up the outside walls, and much of it is still there, doing its job on borrowed time. Galvanised pipe corrodes from the inside out. The bore narrows year by year until a tap that once ran hard barely fills a kettle, and the pipe wall thins until a pinhole opens, usually somewhere awkward, under the veranda or behind a bath panel.

The symptoms are easy to recognise once you have seen enough of them: a slow tap on the far side of the house, brown water first thing in the morning, a damp patch on a veranda board, a water bill that has crept up for no obvious reason. In a house that has been lovingly restored, the worry is usually not the pipe itself but what fixing it will do to the pressed-steel ceilings and the timber floors. That is exactly the part we are careful about.

The Melville Koppies rise directly behind the suburb, a ridge of hard rock and highveld grass that gives the higher streets their views and their drainage problems. The ground is shallow and rocky, so the original clay and cast-iron drains were laid at whatever fall the rock allowed. A century of settling later, joints have opened, sections have cracked, and the old trees that make these streets so pleasant have sent their roots straight into them.

Then summer arrives. A highveld storm drops a great deal of water on the ridge in a short time, and it runs down through the gardens looking for the lowest point. Where a gully has been plumbed into the sewer drain, or a cracked pipe is taking in ground water, the drain that coped all winter suddenly backs up, often with a full house of tenants upstairs. We clean and jet the drain to get you running again, then deal with the reason it blocked, so you are not calling us again after the next storm.

1. Get it flowing first. We clear the blockage and jet the line so the house is usable again, before anything else.
2. Look for the reason. Roots, a collapsed clay section, a gully taking storm-water, a bellied pipe on the rock: we check the accessible drain and tell you plainly what we found.
3. Fix the section, not the symptom. We repair or replace the broken pipe or the root-damaged joint, and separate storm-water from the sewer drain where it has crept in.
4. Test it properly. We run water through the whole line and the gullies to make sure it copes with more than a kitchen sink.

Melville renovates carefully. The facades stay, the pressed-steel ceilings stay, the sash windows stay, and behind them a new bathroom or kitchen goes in that has to work with the century-old bones of the house. We do the plumbing and waterproofing side of that work: new supply and waste lines to a modern layout, a shower that drains properly on a timber floor, and a geyser that fits the roof space you actually have rather than the one the plans assumed.

Geysers in Melville deserve a paragraph of their own. Many sit in tight, hot roof spaces above ceilings that must not be damaged, and in the subdivided houses one geyser sometimes feeds a cottage as well as the main house. We repair and replace electric geysers correctly, drip tray, overflow and pressure-relief valve included, and for restorers who want the roof space back, a gas geyser on an outside wall is often the tidier answer.

The suburb's other constant is the rental house. Between the universities in Auckland Park and the pull of the 7th Street cafes, a large share of Melville's old houses have been divided into flats, cottages and student digs. Landlords need a plumber who turns up when arranged, works around the tenants, sends a written quote the owner can approve from anywhere, and does not need to be called back. Nothing on that list is complicated. It just has to happen every time.