Cleared the same day where we can. In a walk-up we also work out whether this is your blockage or the building's, because the flat that floods is usually not the flat that caused it.
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A house has its own drain and its own problems. A walk-up has one or two stacks serving every flat in the building, and that changes both the cause and the consequence.
The cause is collective. Everything anybody in the building puts down a toilet or a sink shares the same line. In a suburb where a large share of flats turn over every year or two, because of the hospitals and the university nearby, there is no shared memory of what that drain has been asked to cope with.
The consequence lands in one place. Water backing up in a blocked stack surfaces at the lowest opening, which is the ground floor flat. That occupant did not necessarily contribute anything to the blockage and is frequently a tenant who cannot authorise the repair either.
So we clear it, and then we tell you plainly whether it was the building's line or that flat's. Those are different bills and different people.
That pattern is almost never about your flat. Say so when you call and we will bring what we need to look at the stack rather than just your bathroom.
A stack takes everything from the flats above and carries it down to the main. When it restricts, the contents back up until they find the lowest opening on the line.
In a walk-up that is frequently a ground floor fixture or an external gully, and the flat that suffers is not the flat that caused it.
So the ground floor bears the consequence of what happens above it, which is worth understanding before anybody starts allocating blame.
Original stacks in interwar blocks are frequently cast iron, and cast iron corrodes internally, losing bore steadily over decades with nothing visible from outside.
So the stack is not only accumulating material. It has less room for it than it started with, and the two effects compound.
That is why a building can go from occasional trouble to regular trouble over a few years without anything having obviously changed.
They clear the bowl and then do not break down. In a shared stack that means material from one flat causing trouble for every flat below it.
Nobody involved knows, and nobody upstairs sees any consequence at all, which is what makes it persist.
It is worth raising as a building matter rather than a plumbing one, because a notice in a stairwell reaches people that a plumber never will.
Randwick's population is shaped by four hospitals and a university, so a great many of these flats change occupants every year or two.
Which means nobody in the building remembers that the same stack blocked in 2021 and 2023, and each occurrence is treated as the first.
That is how a recurring structural problem gets cleared indefinitely without anybody ever seeing the pattern.
Dates, which flats were affected, and what was found each time. In a building without continuity of residents, that record is the only thing that survives.
It usually falls to an owner or a committee member rather than a tenant, and it is worth doing deliberately.
Three dated occurrences is what turns a vague sense into something that can go on an agenda.
Pipework serving one flat is generally that owner's. The shared stack and the lines serving the building are generally common property.
That distinction decides who arranges and who pays, and it is worth establishing before anybody is invoiced.
It has nothing to do with diagnosing the fault, and the two questions get answered separately.
One flat slow is a branch problem. Several at once, or the lowest fixture in the building backing up, is the stack.
The single most useful thing anybody can do is ask a neighbour, and in a small block that is one message.
It also matters because a plumber called to one flat cannot repair a common stack and should not try.
A single blockage does not need filming. Two in a year in different flats on the same stack is the line describing itself, and it is a much stronger signal than two in the same flat.
That is the point at which a camera earns its money, because clearing again treats an event that is not one.
In a building with high turnover, catching that pattern is the hard part.
Kitchen fat from a dozen flats cools onto the same length of stack and narrows it far faster than fat from one household would.
On cast iron that has already lost bore internally, there is less room to give up before trouble starts.
So both of the ordinary causes have more effect here than they would in a house of the same age.
Whether the stack is restricted by material, by corrosion, or by a defect, and where. Those three look identical from a blocked toilet and have different answers.
The recording is yours whatever it shows, and for an owners corporation it is the thing that makes a decision possible at a meeting.
Ask for the file rather than a viewing, and keep it with the building's records rather than one person's phone.
Quoted at a fixed price before it starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges. On a repeat in a block, the camera is the line worth paying for, because the footage is what lets a committee decide between clearing it again and dealing with the pipe.
Hand tools or an electric eel through an existing access point, in a house or a single lot.
Access in a common area, with the lowest flat protected while the line is cleared.
Down the stack with footage handed over, showing scale, bore and what is actually catching.
High-pressure water where an eel will not do it, or to flush a scaled cast iron stack.
Stack or lot, with reasoning. What a self-managed committee needs to act on.
In a block those two answers decide whether we are looking at one bathroom or at the stack the whole building shares.
Working from the closest existing point so nothing backs up further through the lowest flat while we clear it.
The footage shows whether this is what people are flushing or a cast iron bore that has closed up over fifty years.
In writing. It is what stops the ground floor flat paying for the building's pipe.
Stop using every fixture on that line, and if you are in a flat, tell the neighbours above to do the same. On a shared stack that is the fastest way to stop it getting worse.
Call 1300 381 569Because that flat is the lowest opening on a stack the whole building uses. A walk-up typically runs one or two stacks serving every unit above, so when the line blocks below the lowest connection, the water backing up has to surface somewhere and it surfaces at the bottom. The flat that floods is very often not the flat that caused it. That matters when somebody starts assigning blame, and it is worth saying early.
Here, completely. Randwick sits inside the largest collocated health precinct in NSW, with four hospitals and a university nearby, so a great many flats turn over every year or two. In a twelve-unit block a fair number of the occupants may have moved in within the last twelve months. There is no institutional memory of what the drain has coped with, which is exactly why we camera a repeat blockage rather than guess at it.
Generally, pipework serving only your flat is yours and the shared stack is the owners corporation's. In practice a blockage in the stack presents inside one person's bathroom, so it looks like theirs. We establish which it is and put it in writing, because in a self-managed block with no building manager there is usually nobody else who will.
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 they are considerably worse than in a house, because one flat's habit becomes everybody's blockage and the person who finds out is whoever lives at the bottom. If a block has recurring issues, a note in the building about wipes does more good than most plumbing.
Rarely, and in a block they make things worse. They sit against the blockage rather than passing through it, they generate heat, and in old cast iron or galvanised they attack the pipe as readily as the obstruction. They also make the water we then have to work in caustic, in a stack shared with other people's bathrooms. If someone has poured one down, tell us when you call rather than after we have opened it.
On a first blockage, usually not. Something went down, we clear it, done. On a second in the same stack inside a year, yes, and in a building of this age it is worth the committee seeing the footage. Original cast iron scales inward as it corrodes, so the usable bore narrows steadily while the outside of the pipe looks perfectly sound. The camera is what tells you whether you are dealing with what people flush or with the pipe itself.
Most clears through an existing access point are $150 to $400. On a shared stack where the access is in a common area, $250 to $550, because getting to it and protecting the flat below takes longer. A camera inspection is $250 to $450 with the footage handed over, which on a repeat in a block is the thing worth paying for. We say up front whether the cost should be landing on a lot owner or on the owners corporation.
Tell us whether it is a house or a flat, whether it has happened before, and whether the block has a manager. That is usually enough for us to know what we are walking into.
Fixed price agreed before we start, and a written finding on whose pipework it was.
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