Plumber in Parktown North

Parktown North is one of the oldest of the northern suburbs, and some of its houses have passed the hundred-year mark. They were built for a different way of living: a small kitchen at the back, one bathroom for the whole family, an outbuilding at the end of the garden. The families who buy them now want an open kitchen, a bathroom for every bedroom, a cottage that earns its keep and a room to work from. Every one of those changes moves water, and moving water in an eighty-year-old house is the part of the renovation nobody photographs.

Supply lines have to be re-routed through walls that were built solid. Waste lines need a proper fall to reach a drain that was laid for a different floor plan. The new shower needs waterproofing behind it that will still be dry in ten years. And because a renovated Parktown North house is very often a house that will be sold, all of it has to be done so it passes the Plumbing Certificate of Compliance when the time comes, not patched for the inspector afterwards.

Many of the drains under Parktown North are as old as the houses above them: clay pipe and cast iron, laid in short sections with joints that were never meant to hold out against a century of tree roots. And Parktown North has trees. Big ones along the Avenues, older ones in the gardens, every one of them sending roots towards the nearest source of moisture. A slightly open joint in a clay drain is exactly that.

The signs arrive slowly. A gully that gurgles when the bath empties. A toilet that needs a second flush. A drain smell in the garden after rain. Then one morning the shower backs up and the whole house is on hold. When we clear a Parktown North drain we do not just push the blockage through. We cut the root mass out, jet the line clean, and tell you plainly whether the pipe can carry on or whether a section has reached the end of its life.

Stands here are compact, and the older properties often share a boundary wall with the neighbour. Now and then they share a drain line as well, which is worth knowing before anyone starts digging. We establish which line serves which house first, then work on the right one.

1. Find the cause, not just the blockage. We work out where the line runs, which gully it serves, and whether roots, a collapsed section or a build-up of grease and scale is behind the trouble.
2. Clear and cut. The blockage comes out and the root mass gets cut back with the right machine for the pipe, so the drain runs freely again rather than for a fortnight.
3. Jet the line clean. High-pressure jetting scours the inside of the pipe so the next root and the next lot of grease have less to hold on to.
4. Tell you the truth about the pipe. If a section of clay or cast iron has cracked or collapsed we say so, quote the repair in writing, and leave the decision with you.

The roof space in an old Parktown North house was never designed to hold a geyser. It was fitted later, through a trapdoor that is usually too small, onto timbers that were never meant to carry it, in a corner you have to crawl to reach. Replacing one is half plumbing and half patience. We do it properly: the old cylinder comes out without damage to the ceiling, the new one goes in on a drip tray with the overflow piped to the outside where you can see it, and the pressure control valve and vacuum breakers are fitted the way the standard asks for them.

For a renovation, a gas geyser is often the better answer. It takes the weight out of the roof, gives the new bathrooms hot water on demand, and sits on an outside wall where it can be serviced without a torch and a ladder. We install and certify both.

Under the floors and inside the walls of the older Parktown North houses that have not yet been re-piped is the galvanised steel pipe that went in when the house was built. It has done its job for longer than anyone expected. But galvanised pipe corrodes from the inside, the bore narrows year by year, and eventually it starts to weep at its thinnest points: a damp patch on a wall, a warm spot on a wooden floor, a water bill that has crept up for no reason anyone can name.

Where the leak is in pipework we can get to, we find it and fix it. Where the pipe has reached the stage of one pinhole after another, patching it is a false economy, and we say so. A re-pipe in copper or PEX, run neatly along a planned route, restores the flow and puts an end to the repeat call-outs. Where the house is occupied we stage the work, so it is not without water for longer than it needs to be.

One more Parktown North detail: the stands are small, boundary walls are often shared, and so occasionally is a supply line. Before we open anything we establish whose pipe it is, which saves an awkward conversation over the wall.

• Pressure that fades at the kitchen tap the moment a bathroom tap is opened, because the bore has narrowed inside.
• Rusty water first thing in the morning, or a brown tinge in the bath after a few days away.
• Repeat pinhole leaks in different places over a year or two, each one patched, none of them the last.
• A water meter that keeps turning with every tap in the house closed.
• A renovation on the way, which is the cheapest moment to replace the pipe, while the floors and walls are already open.