Cleared the same day where we can. And in a small block we will show you what clearing it every year actually costs against fixing it once, because almost nobody has ever added it up.
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Ashfield is a six-pack suburb: the two and three storey red-brick walk-up, six to twelve flats, no lift, made sellable flat by flat by the Strata Titles Act 1967.
That law is why the plumbing decisions here work the way they do. A repair in a large tower is spread across a hundred lots and paid from a sinking fund nobody feels. In a six-pack the same repair is a special levy of a thousand dollars per owner, landing in the post.
So the block does the affordable thing instead. It clears the stack again. Then again next year. Two clears a year at $350 is $7,000 across a decade, which is more than the repair would have cost, and it is spent in pieces small enough that nobody notices.
We are not going to pretend a special levy is easy. What we will do is put both numbers on one page, including the cost of deferring another year, so the committee is choosing between two known figures instead of one affordable option and one frightening one.
Then it is worth knowing what that is costing per decade. A camera and twenty minutes of arithmetic will tell you, and both come with the inspection.
The six-pack exists because the Strata Titles Act 1967 made individual ownership of flats practical, and a six-lot walk-up was what fitted comfortably on a suburban block.
So these buildings went up in very large numbers over a short period, and this suburb has a great many of them.
They share a shape, a vintage and, importantly, a financial structure. That last one is what this page is about.
The same job that vanishes into a tower's sinking fund arrives in a six-lot scheme as a special levy that each owner can feel.
So the identical drainage fault is a routine maintenance item in one building and a genuine financial event in another.
That is not a plumbing difference. It is why small schemes make different decisions from large ones, and it deserves to be understood rather than judged.
These are entry-level buildings and levies were usually set as low as the owners could manage. A capital works fund with a real balance in it is the exception.
So when something needs replacing rather than clearing, the money is not there, and the decision becomes a special levy or nothing.
Nothing is the option that requires no meeting, which is how it usually goes.
Clearing fits inside ordinary levies. Repair does not. So the block pays for a clearance twice a year for a decade and nobody ever adds it up.
Twenty clearances at a few hundred each is a repair nobody decided to buy, spread thin enough that it never appeared on an agenda.
Adding it up is the single most useful thing anybody on a committee can do, and it takes one evening with the invoices.
Where the full job cannot be funded, some of it usually can. The worst section first, the rest next year, each stage a complete repair in its own right.
That is a real option with lining and not with excavation, and it is covered properly on the relining page.
It turns an impossible number into two possible ones, which is frequently the difference between a decision and another decade of clearances.
One flat slow is a branch problem and generally that lot's. Several at once is downstream of all of them, and that is the owners corporation's.
The test is one message to a neighbour, and it decides who should be arranging what.
It matters because a plumber called to your flat cannot repair a common line and should not try.
A first blockage that clears easily does not need filming. The third in the same year is the line describing itself, and clearing it again is buying the same afternoon.
In a small scheme that threshold is reached quickly, because the same stack serves six households.
Keep the dates. Three dated occurrences is what turns a vague sense into something a committee can act on.
Wipes remain the largest single cause of what we cut out of drains, and on a common stack the load arrives from every flat connected to it.
Kitchen fat is the slower version and the same arithmetic applies. Fat from six kitchens narrows a line considerably faster than fat from one.
That is why common stacks block more often than a house of the same age, and it is nobody in particular's fault.
Original stacks in buildings of this era are frequently cast iron, which corrodes internally and loses bore over decades with nothing visible from outside.
So the line is not only accumulating material. It has less room for it than it started with, and both effects compound.
That is what a camera shows, and it is the difference between a blockage and a building with a drainage problem.
Whether there is a defect, where it is, what condition the stack is in, and what repair it needs. All of it in one pass, and the file is yours.
For a small scheme that recording is the thing that makes a decision possible at a meeting, because a committee acts on documents rather than on accounts of what a plumber said.
Ask for the file rather than a viewing, and ask for it whatever it shows.
Quoted at a fixed price before anyone starts, because that is the only kind of number a committee can approve. These are indicative 2026 ranges.
Through an existing access point, cleared and flow tested before we leave.
Common-area access, with the flat below protected while we work.
Footage handed over. What settles whether this is habits or the pipe.
Roots and hardened build-up in old pipework take longer than a soft blockage.
Clearing per year against repair once, plus what deferring a year does to both.
How many flats, whether there is a manager, and how often this has happened. That shapes what we hand over at the end.
Through the existing access point, then run properly to confirm it is genuinely clear rather than just moving.
If this keeps happening we film it, because the committee needs to see the pipe rather than hear about it.
Clearing per year against repair once, staged options, and the cost of waiting. In writing.
We will get it running today. If it is a shared stack we will also make sure whoever needs to know at your block gets something in writing.
Call 1300 381 569It is common, and it is usually a funding decision rather than a plumbing one. Clearing is affordable out of ordinary levies. Repairing is a special levy that six owners have to agree to. So the block keeps paying for clearing because that is the bill it can absorb, and nobody ever adds up what a decade of it comes to. Two clears a year at $350 is $7,000 over ten years, which is comfortably more than most repairs would have been.
With numbers rather than opinions. We put a camera down and record the actual condition, then set out what clearing costs per year at the current rate, what the repair costs once, and what happens to both figures if the decision is deferred another year. That is a comparison a committee can look at and vote on. Without it the meeting has one affordable option and one frightening one, and it will pick the affordable one every time.
In practice, we do a fair amount of it, and that is normal in a scheme this size. There will be no plans on file, no maintenance history, and often no shared knowledge of where the isolation valves are. We establish what is actually there, film it, and hand over a written scope with a figure. Six owners can act on that. They cannot act on a verbal opinion from whoever attended the last blockage.
Because that flat is the lowest opening on a line the whole building uses, so when the stack blocks below the lowest connection the water has to surface somewhere and it surfaces at the bottom. The flat that floods very often contributed nothing to the blockage. Worth saying early, before anybody starts assigning blame at a meeting.
No. They clear the bowl, which is all the label really promises, then fail to break down the way paper does. In a shared stack one flat's habit becomes the whole building's blockage, and the person who finds out is whoever lives at the bottom. In a block with a recurring problem, a note on the noticeboard about wipes does more good than most plumbing.
Rarely, and in a shared stack they are worse than useless. They sit against the blockage rather than passing through it, they generate heat, and in old pipework they attack the pipe as readily as the obstruction. They also leave caustic water sitting in a line shared with other people's bathrooms. If someone has poured one down, please say so when you ring.
A clear inside a single flat through an existing access point is $150 to $400. A shared stack, where access is in a common area and the flat below has to be protected, is $250 to $550. A camera inspection is $250 to $450 with the footage handed over. For an owners corporation the written scope and the cost comparison come at no extra charge, because a committee cannot vote on something it has not seen.
Tell us how many flats are in the block and how often this has happened. Those two answers decide whether you need a clear or a conversation with the other owners.
Fixed price agreed first, footage handed over, and costed options if this is a shared line.
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