Crisis Plumbing in a Suburb with Every Wall Shared
There is not one freestanding house in Rushcutters Bay. Not one. All the apartments in the suburb are apartments in a small residential area of 2,335 people. One-bedders, penthouses with panoramic views of the harbour, studios, and all the in-between, jostle skyward in structures designed both in the 1920s art deco walk-up and in the most recent concrete towers of New South Head Road.
The fact that we have all-apartment reality alters the workings of plumbing emergencies here. Your own floor is flooded by a burst pipe in the house. A plumbing pipe in an apartment block in Rushcutters Bay explodes, and the water has sprayed onto your floor, after that through the hole in the ceiling into the apartment below, and then even into the one below that. When the water starts showing on the ground floor, it has cut through two to three stories of plasterwork, electrical installations and finished surfaces. The first person to become aware of a problem is often the neighbour who is the first to learn that it was happening in your unit when you were at work.
The suburb lies directly along the Sydney Harbour with Rushcutters bay park bordering on the water. The history of sewerage in the area dates back to the inception of the modern infrastructure of Sydney. The heritage-listed Rushcutters Bay Sewage Pumping Station, the first of the twenty low-level stations originally built in 1902 to stop the release of raw sewage into the harbour, remains in operation today in the park. It was a direct reaction to the typhoid outbreaks that hit Sydney between 1870 and 1890. The sewerage system of the suburb was later on upgraded over a hundred years, however, the topography which led to the pumping station in the first place, still influences the behaviour of the stormwater and drainage during the heavy rain.
When an emergency call is received at Rushcutters Bay we are almost on the spot. The suburb lies three kilometres away in the CBD in between Elizabeth Bay, Darlinghurst, and Darling Point, which we work on a daily basis. We are familiar with the intercom systems, the building access, the narrow streets and the parking restrictions. It is not the trouble to get to you. The trick is to contain the damage before it gets on the other floor.
Why Emergencies Hit Harder Here Rushcutters Bay
Total suburb area. Sydney is one of the smallest, that is, we are practically always around when you call and we have one of the quickest response times.
Human population per square kilometre. All the emergencies are apartment emergencies, common walls, common ceilings, common outcomes.
Water/hours per burst flexi hose. in an apartment, with many storeys, the gravity conveys that down through all the levels below the fracture.
The sewerage network of the suburb has been operating more than 120 years since the construction of the heritage-listed Rushcutters Bay Sewage Pumping Station, which dates back to the year it was constructed.
Sources: ABS Census, 2021; .id population estimates; NSW State Heritage Register; Allianz Insurance claims data.
Frequent Plumbing Problems in Rushcutters Bay
Every emergency in a suburb that is 100 per cent apartments has a vertical aspect. Water goes down. Sound travels up. And the aftereffects are never personal.
Bursting Pipe and Cascading Damage
As a pipe bursts in an apartment in Rushcutters Bay, the water does not simply lie on your floor. It is lowest, which is normally an opening around a pipe opening, a crack in the slab or a junction between the floor and wall and drips down into the unit below. A burst in a six-storey walk-up will leave a water mark on the ceiling of level three, fill up the wall cavity on level two and a pool in the corridor on level one before anyone notices the source of the burst. We segregate, follow the trail of excesses floor after floor and correct the cause, not the symptom.
Shared Stacks with Blocked Drains
Apartment buildings have common vertical sewer stacks that transport waste in all apartments on each floor. When a blockage occurs, wet wipes, grease, a foreign object or sewage settle through the lowest drain points first. It is the basement and ground-floor units that receive the brunt of it. The stacks in older buildings in Rushcutters Bay are either cast iron or ceramic with decades old joints that have worn out over time. Before we leave we jet blast the stack clear and the camera confirms it to be flowing.
Enclosed Apartment Gas Leaks
The leaks of gases in apartments are more hazardous than in houses since the gas has limited escape ways. Gas can build up to dangerous levels in a closed-up apartment in Rushcutters Bay, whose windows are closed, and whose gas cooktop connection is corroded or dislodged. On smelling the rotten-egg smell, switch off the gas at the meter or isolation valve, open windows and doors, do not touch any electrical switches and leave the building. We have the gas fitting licences needed and we come with detection equipment.
Burst Flexi Hoses
Braided flexi pipes under the kitchen sinks and toilet cisterns malfunction or fail after five to ten years. At an apartment in the suburb of Rushcutters Bay where the resident is working, a burst flexi hose sprays water at a rate of 1,500 litres an hour upon the floor, through the slab and into an apartment located 11 storeys down. According to data released by QBE Insurance, flexi hoses have been the leading cause of internal water damage claims in Australia. In the high-rise apartment buildings, one flexi hose failure can destroy two or three units.
Hot Water Systems Failures
Approximately 18 per cent of the residents of Rushcutters bay are aged above 65. To an elderly individual residing alone in an apartment without hot water during winter, the case is really life-threatening. We determine whether the system is repairable on the spot, element, thermostat, pilot or requires replacement and either one is done the same day where stock and access permit.
Centralised System Failures
The bigger buildings at Rushcutters bay have centralised hot water or drainage systems fed out of common plant rooms. A single failure of the circulator pump in the central loop or the failure of a common valve results in instantaneous loss of hot water in all units of the building. Such failures must be addressed as soon as possible since they impact dozens of residents at a time. We maintain the plumbing aspect of centralised systems and liaise with the strata manager to get the building back on track.
What to Do Immediately in case of an Emergency
The five minutes in an apartment building are the difference between having damage in your apartment and damaging your neighbours.
✅ Do These Things Immediately
- Switch off the water. The isolation valve is located either under the kitchen sink or in a utility cupboard in most Rushcutters Bay apartments. In other buildings a main shut-off is in the hallway or cellar. In case you are not able to locate it, call us and we will guide you on the phone as we are on our way to you.
- In the case of gas leakages: turn off, ventilate, and abandon. No switches, no lighters, no exhaust fans. A real explosion hazard is the presence of gas in a closed apartment.
- Caution your neighbour below. Should there be water flowing, it is making its way down to the next unit. Their door is knocked very briefly, which gives them time to relocate the items that are in the drip zone before the water stream comes through the ceiling.
- Take pictures prior to cleaning up. Your strata manager and insurer require evidence of initial-state. Record some long shots and close-ups of the source of water and its area of spread.
- Inform building caretaker or strata manager. When it is a common infrastructure failure, sewer stack, common riser, or a centralised system, they must be informed instantly.
- Call us on 1300 026 452. Inform us of the situation, the floor that you are in and whether the water has flooded other units. We will send somebody at once.
❌ Avoid These Mistakes
- Taping a burst pipe is not a good idea. Tape does not withstand mains pressure. An apartment patch failure increases the hours of water exposure to your unit and those below.
- Do not pour chemicals in a backed-up drain. Whether the sewage is overflowing through a common stack, there is no use of chemicals, they destroy the pipe to all the units above and below you.
- Do not think that the damage will be confined to your floor. Water moves through slab penetrations, pipe chases and wall cavities. Even when your own floor appears to be contained, check with your neighbour downstairs.
- A slight smell of gas should not be overlooked. Gas concentrations may accumulate rapidly in a closed apartment. Smell it at all, take action.
- Wait not till morning. The damage to water in an apartment building multiplies by the hour, and includes more than one unit, more than one insurer and a strata manager. The faster it is prevented the easier it will be.
Apartment Insurance: What is covered
With a strata building, the insurance is divided into three. The strata insurance of the building covers the structure, common walls, ceilings, shared pipes, slab between floors. Your belongings, furniture, electronics, clothes are covered by your contents insurance. And your lot-owner policy insures fixtures and improvements in your unit, kitchen cabinets, tiling of your bathroom, flooring installed by you. When the bursting of a pipe in your unit causes the apartment under it to be damaged, the claim of your neighbour is against the strata insurance of the building or a lot-owner policy in which the location of the pipe is relevant. Record all of this, and call in a licensed plumber, and inform your strata manager. All emergency jobs will receive a written report that can be used in all three insurance discussions.
A Century-and-a-half of Sewerage pipes Under your Feet
The modern history of Rushcutters Bay began in 1902 with the construction by the NSW Public Works Department of Sewage Pumping Station 18, one of the twenty low-level stations built around the foreshore of Sydney Harbour to collect sewage in too low-lying areas to drain into the main sewer. The station was the direct consequence of the typhoid epidemics that struck Sydney several times between 1870s and 1890s and killed hundreds of people, as well as polluted the harbour.
Prior to the construction of those pumping stations, the sewage of the harbour foreshore suburbs such as Rushcutters Bay was discharged into the water. The practice was stopped by the remaining pumping station in Rushcutters Bay Park listed on the NSW State Heritage Register since 1999, which raises sewage through rising mains to the Bondi ocean outfall sewer.
The station continues to this day and is over 120 years old. Its mechanical elements are modernised, but the infrastructure under the streets and buildings of Rushcutters Bay is more than a century old. When a sewer plugs in one of the older apartment buildings of the suburb, the piping that is attached to it is downstream of the building itself, and was laid before the building was even built. The age, material and layout of this infrastructure are vital in diagnosing what has gone wrong and repairing it in the right way, not only in clearing the symptom.
The Cascade Problem: How Apartment Emergencies Get out of Control
In a free standing house, a plumbing emergency befalls a single household. In one apartment block, Rushcutters Bay, one failure can impact a dozen units in an hour. Water takes the path of least resistance down, through pipe penetrations in the slab, perimeter of duct risers and cracks in the concrete that no one was aware of until the water discovered them.
Level three burst flexi hose does not simply wet the floor of the kitchen. It permeates the slab, leaks into the ceiling of level two, flows along an electrical conduit through the cavity and forms a brown stain on the bedroom wall of level one. The man on the first floor is unaware that the issue began two stories above. The insurer would like to be aware of the exact point of failure. The manager strata will require records of what common property was compromised. And the tenant on the third floor is trying to locate the isolation valve that he has never required in his life before.
We are presented with this multi-unit cascade situation in Rushcutters Bay on a regular basis. The first thing when we get here is to isolate the water and find the source floor. Then we follow the trail of destruction through the building, storey after storey. We record all the units affected, photographs, written records, identification of the pipes and then the strata manager and the insurers of each unit will have what they need to acquit their individual claims. The repair in itself is typically simple. It is the paperwork and communications that follow which can make the difference between a situation that can be dealt with and one that lasts months of disputes with the insurance company.
How Our Emergency Call-Outs operate in Rushcutters Bay
Report on what has happened, broken pipe, clogged drain, smell of gas, cascade damage. Please indicate what floor you are on and whether other units have been affected.
Rushcutters bay is located 3km to the CBD, and it is sandwiched between the suburbs that we visit day in day out. We have the intercom passwords, the car park and building access. We are usually within an hour.
First: halt the harm. Isolation of water, relieving of gas and alleviation of pressure. We then check, clarify the issue and give you a transparent price. Nothing begins till you say so.
We debug, test and clean up. Your strata manager and insurer receive a written report, detailing the cause of the fault, the place of the fault, the repair, and the units affected.
What People Say After We've Sorted Their Emergency
"One evening we had a burst pipe in the kitchen and Plumber Sydney was the first to take the phone, and they came to us within an hour, and everything was done with the professionals."
"We had had no hot water in our Elizabeth Bay unit in two days, but these fellows arrived there the same day, and fixed it. We were really grateful the job was done so quickly."
"Telephone assistance with urgent plumbing problems, before going to the house to resolve the problem. The sorting of issues was done in a few minutes and a follow up call the following day to confirm that it was working!"
FAQs Emergency Plumbing Rushcutters Bay
Rushcutters bay Emergency Service Areas
Our response is to the emergency calls in the Rushcutters Bay and the entire surrounding inner-east and Eastern Suburbs.
Rushcutters Bay Plumbing Emergency?
Even in an apartment building, a minute of standing water cannot only impact your unit. Give us a call and we will have a licensed plumber at your building in no time.
