Drains Built on a Swamp: The Rushcutters Bay Drainage Problem has Never Been Easy
It is self-explanatory. This place, as the early settlers named it, Rush Cutting Bay, because of the high rushes they cut to thatch their houses, of the swampy land.. The bay head had a low-lying, boggy and poorly drained area. Rushcutters Bay was among the harbour foreshore suburbs that could not drain down to the main outfall sewers by gravity when Sydney started to construct its modern sewerage system in the late 1800s. The ground was too level, too low and too near the harbour waterline.
The reason why the NSW Government constructed Sewage Pumping Station 18 here in 1902, among the twenty pumping stations initially built in the inner harbour, was to pump sewage in those areas that could not naturally be pumped out. The station remains operational today in its location in Rushcutters Bay Park, being heritage-listed on the NSW State Heritage Register since 1999. It was constructed as a direct reaction to the typhoid epidemics which afflicted Sydney between 1870s and 1890s and its opening brought to an end the dumping of raw sewage into this part of the harbour.
The larger Rushcutters Bay catchment is an area of about 2.4 square kilometres, which includes Paddington, Darlinghurst, Edgecliff and Woollahra downhill to the harbour. The 2003 Rushcutters Bay Catchment Flood Study commissioned following the repeated flooding in 1983, 1984, 1989, 1991, 1998, 2001 and 2003, concluded that the bulk of the drainage infrastructure in the catchment was constructed during the 1930s. and during much of its history the system was in part a stormwater and sewerage system, i.e. the same pipes were used to carry the stormwater runoff and the domestic waste. Sydney water has since decoupled these systems, although the infrastructure beneath the suburb is old, convoluted and the population density was a fraction of what is present today.
That history is under a suburb which is 100 per cent apartments. No independent house. Over 2,300 people packed 0.16 square kilometers. All the blocked drains here are apartment drains, shared stacks, shared account and shared costs when the system fails.
Rushcutters Bay's Drainage, The Numbers That Explain the Problem
The Rushcutters Bay flood catchment area serves the downstream areas of Paddington, Darlinghurst, Edgecliff and Woollahra to the harbour.
At the time of the majority of the drainage infrastructure construction in the catchment. Sections used to use the same pipes to transmit stormwater and sewage.
When the heritage-listed Rushcutters Bay Sewage Pumping Station was constructed, due to the low-lying suburb being unable to drain by gravity.
People per square kilometre. All the drains are to serve an apartment house with a shared stack, shared responsibility, shared consequences.
References: Rushcutters Bay Catchment Flood Study (2006/2016), NSW State Heritage Register, ABS Census 2021.
What Blocks Drains in Rushcutters Bay
A suburb, constructed on swampland, with the drainage infrastructure of the 1930s, 100 per cent apartment density, and a harbour catchment that surges up in the event of heavy rain. This is what we most see.
Wet Wipes in Common Sewer Stacks
All buildings in Rushcutters Bay are apartment buildings, which have vertical stacks of sewers used to dispose of waste in all units on each floor. The wet wipes, which are sold as flushable, but in no way degradable, are concentrated at bends, junctions and at the first horizontal portion at the bottom of the stack. And multiply those wipes by a dozen apartments to the stack, and the plug is erected quicker than in any house. As the stack opens up, sewage creeps up through the lowest drain points first, with ground-floor and basement units bearing the brunt of the sewage.
Grease Apartment Kitchens
Cooking oil passes through the drain pipe and the solid oil forms as it cools in the pipe. The accumulation is slow in one family. When the grease is deposited into a drainage line in an apartment house or building, with fifteen or twenty different kitchens opening into the same drain, the grease is deposited much more rapidly, and layers of it coat the inner side of the pipe, making it narrower each month, until it finally chokes the passage altogether. We sweep out greasy kitchen piles in Rushcutters Bay structures regularly, especially in the older walk-ups along the Waratah Street, and the blocks along the New South Head Road.
Older 1930s Drainage Infrastructure
In the Rushcutters Bay Catchment Flood Study, the majority of drainage infrastructure built in the catchment was built during the 1930s. Ninety-plus years of service of pipes that were intended to serve a far lower population density. In that period, terracotta and ceramic pipes had joints every metre, each of which is a potential point of failure with soil getting into them, roots encroaching in them, and parts slowly drifting out of position. When your building is linked with the pipe network serving that of the council or Sydney Water infrastructure of this age, the state of all of the pipework downstream will impact the effectiveness of your own drainage system.
Stormwater overflow at the Catchment
The Rushcutters Bay catchment is 2.4 square kilometres and the stormwater is drained off the hillside suburbs of Paddington and Darlinghurst down the Trumper Park and the White City complex into two culverts which lead to the harbour under the craigend street and the New south head road. When this system gets overwhelmed due to heavy rainfall, as has been the case on multiple occasions in recorded floods, stormwater will be forced to accumulate through the backdoor through personal connections and surcharges into the surface level properties. When the storm occurs and the private stormwater drains of your building are partially blocked, the overflow occurs in your building.
Fully-Combined System Connections (Legacy)
Since decades, drainage in some areas of Rushcutters Bay was a combined stormwater and sewerage system, where the same pipes were used to direct rainwater and domestic waste. These systems have since been separated by Sydney Water, although in certain older buildings, the internal connections have not been kept up to date. Combined connections may result in cross-contamination between sewer and stormwater lines, which can be challenging to diagnose without a camera inspection. A combined connection is likely to be the cause when a building drain smells of sewage during rain.
Renovation of Old Pipes Meeting Building
The apartment buildings of Rushcutters Bay have been modernised over and over again throughout the decades, new kitchens, new bathrooms, new laundries. The renovations might each have attached modern PVC waste pipes to the original ceramic or cast iron drainage in the building with rubber adapters. Those points of connection wear down, weakening joints where debris collects and hindrances develop. The drainage system in a building with several units that have been refurbished by various plumbers at different times is a mosaic of materials, connections and compromises.
There are 6 Signs a Blocked Drain Is Building
When a drain blockage can cause sewage to spit into your bathroom, and your neighbour to have sewage dripping through their ceiling, it is worth making the effort of catching them early.
Several Fixtures With Sluggish Drainage.
A sluggish kitchen, shower and basin are all sluggish simultaneously, the blockage is down in the main drain line or shared stack, not at any single outlet. The greater the number of fixtures affected the deeper the problem.
Gurgling Between Drains
Flush the toilet and the shower drain gurgles. Turn on the washing machine and the kitchen sink foams. Air which is enclosed by a partial blockage causes it to be passed through the closest water seal. The gurgling may be associated with a fitting that you did not even use in an apartment with other apartments stacked atop each other.
Bad Smell in Drains
The decomposition of waste in a partially blocked pipe gives rise to hydrogen sulphide gas. The smell fills the unit in a small Rushcutters Bay apartment, which has limited ventilation. When it is heaviest around the waste on the floor of the bathroom, or at the drain of the kitchen, the obstruction is accumulating in the line below.
Smell In The Sewage In The Rain
Whenever your drains fill up with smelly sewage when it rains, then the probable cause is an old combined stormwater-sewer connection, or stormwater seeping into the sewer line through broken joints. In any case, it shows a structural problem that can be detected by a camera check.
One Fixture Backs Up Into Another
When you flush the toilet, water splushes up in the shower. Laundry floor waste spills when the washing machine empties. Fixtures affecting each other share a drain line that's obstructed downstream. This is the last stage before a full sewage overflow.
Neighbouring Units Reporting The Same Problem
In case the person on the same stack is also having slow drains, it is either the shared vertical part or the horizontal run at the bottom of the building (common property) that is the responsibility of the owners corporation. Report to your strata manager and call us.
How We Clean and Repair Drains in Rushcutters Bay
📹 CCTV Drain Camera Inspection
DiagnosticWe send down the pipe a camera before clearing anything. The camera in Rushcutters Bay apartment buildings, with the drainage system possibly having both the original 1930s ceramic, mid-century cast iron and modern PVC all tied together in series, lets us know precisely what we are dealing with. We capture the video and send it to you. In the case of strata managers, the footage recordings will indicate whether the blockage is in a private lot or common property which will help to identify who will cover the cost of repair.
💦 High-Pressure Jet Blasting
ClearingA high pressure water jet is then focused and cuts through grease build-ups, wet wipe plugs, root balls and sediment deposits. In stacks of shared apartments the jetting cleans the entire bore of the pipe, not a slender channel that becomes re-occluded in a few weeks. In the majority of cases of Rushcutters Bay drain blockages, 100 percent of the blockage is cleared by the jetting process on the same visit. We validate the outcome by a second camera pass and then move on.
🔧 Pipe Relining (No-Dig Repair)
Permanent FixIn cases where the camera shows the broken joints, roots entry points or corrosion in the drain line; relining forms a smooth new pipe within the previous one. No joints implies no subsequent entry of roots, no infiltration of soil and no reoccurring blockages at the same point. In a Rushcutters Bay apartment, where the drain is constructed below a concrete slab, in a basement car park or beneath a shared courtyard, relining does not involve the inconvenience and expense of drilling through building infrastructure. Warranties on relined pipes are up to 35 years.
⛏️ Excavation and Replacement
When NecessaryWhen a pipe has completely collapsed, moved dramatically or broken at more than one point in its length, the damaged part must be removed. Excavation in an apartment building is more complicated than in a house, there may be common facilities, car parks or garden areas which are owned by the owners corporation. Our logistics are planned, we liaise with the strata manager and we repair the surface after replacement. Unless relining is not possible, we do not recommend excavation.
The Catchment Bottleneck: Paddington Rain Runs to Waste
Rushcutters Bay is located in the very low end of 2.4-square-kilometre catchment. All the rain that falls on the sidewalks of the streets of Paddington, the terraces of Darlinghurst, and the apartments of Edgecliff, runs downhill, over council pipes, down kerb gutters, and into the Sydney Water trunk drainage system which runs through Trumper Park and the White City sports complex before reaching Rushcutters Bay itself.
All this stormwater is funnelled at the base of the catchment through two culverts beneath Craigend Street and New South Head Road and into the harbour. Those are the drainage bottle necks. Water retards, when a deep storm floods the piped network upstream, and water overtops the road system, and overcharges into property at the lowest points of the catchment, as has been recorded in flood events in 1983, 1984, 1989, 1991, 1998, 2001 and 2003.
This is important in two aspects with regard to the apartment buildings in lower Rushcutters Bay. To begin with, in case your building has some blocked runoff connections to the stormwater when the storm hits, you are competing with the runoff of the rest of the catchment to drainage systems that are already overflowing. Second, when there are still legacy combined connections in the buildings, stormwater surcharges can be forced into the sewer network and lead to the backup within the units that are not even related to the building plumbing. It is not only maintenance, but also flood prevention of your building to keep your own stormwater drains clear.
Shared Stacks, Shared Problems: The Functioning Of Apartment Drainage
In a free standing house, the sewer line is between the house and the boundary. It belongs to you, and you take care of it and you will have a blockage of your own. The drainage in an apartment block in Rushcutters Bay is common infrastructure. Each floor is served by vertical sewer stacks where all the waste is collected. It is drained to the base of the building in horizontal collector drains to the boundary connection. At every floor, branch lines of each unit are connected to the stack.
When there is blockage in the stack itself, which contains the accumulated wastes of all the units above the point of blockage, the first units to be affected are the ones on the ground and basement levels, since the sewage will be flowing up the lowest drain points. The occupants of such units did not create the obstruction, yet they are the ones that have to cope with sewage on the floor of their bathroom. It could be the real cause was wet wipes that were on a unit three floors up, or grease on a kitchen on the fifth floor.
The issue of whether a blockage is in a private lot or a part of common property is a question of who pays. Our deliverables are CCTV footage and a written report on every blocked drain job within a strata building, including the location of the blockage in relation to the lot boundary, the probable cause and the condition of the pipes. It is also necessary to document it so that the strata manager can apportion the cost equally and the insurer of the building in case the blockage resulted in damage to common facilities or other units.
How a Drain Call-Out Works in Rushcutters Bay
Describe what is occurring, slow drains, overflow, sewage overflow, smell in rain. Please advise whether there are other units in the building which are affected as well.
We will put a CCTV camera down the line, to identify the blockage, the condition of the pipes, and to find out the location; whether it is in your lot or in common property.
Mechanical clearing or jet blasting, or both, restores full flow. You have a good price before you start work. We verify with the second camera pass.
A written report of CCTV footage is provided to your strata manager and insurer. In case structural damage has been identified we clarify, with transparent prices.
What Our Customers Say
"Our drain in the back yard was filling up. Plumber Sydney arrived and made the situation work out in no time, clearing everything, and leaving the place clean and offering tips on how to prevent such an outcome."
"We had no hot water in our Elizabeth Bay unit for two days, everybody told us we would have to wait, but these guys came that same day and fixed it. They were really thankful."
"Fast and efficient service given. Reasonably priced services and highly recommend that you use their services when it comes to your plumbing."
Frequently Asked Questions Blocked Drains Rushcutters Bay
Areas We Service Near Rushcutters Bay
We clear blocked drains across Rushcutters Bay and all surrounding inner-east and Eastern Suburbs locations.
Blocked Drain in Rushcutters Bay?
Don't let it get worse. In an apartment building, a slow drain today is a sewage backup on somebody's floor tomorrow. Call us and we'll sort it, properly, the same day, with a clear report for your strata manager.
