Ocean Salt Spray vs Your Pipes: Why Coogee Is Harsher Than the Harbour

Although a number of Sydney suburbs are located on the water, Coogee’s connection is different to harbour suburbs and it’s tougher on the plumbing. The open Tasman Sea is at the front of Coogee. Hardly any harbour headland to buffer the weather here: it’s surf, swell, and salt spray coming straight off the breakers. That direct contact with the ocean, little known by most homeowners, speeds the deterioration of household plumbing systems.

Salt-contaminated air is one of the worst enemies of any pipes and fittings in any coastal suburb. However, the difference in the salt air from one of the harbours and the spray tossed by the waves of the sea pounding an exposed beach or rocky headlands is meaningful. Coogee gets the harsher one. When the swell is large, you can smell the salt in the air far from the beach, and the salt you smell is falling on and working into all exposed metal in the area.

Where ocean salt does its damage

Hot water systems

The casing, fittings and connections of a hot water unit corrode faster in salt air, and the exposed ocean air speeds it up further. Most significant of all, in coastal areas the sacrificial anode rod inside a storage tank (the one that will corrode rather than the storage tank) will be eaten away quicker. The moment it’s gone is the beginning of the end because it rusts from inside. If you live in a town like Coogee, where you are exposed to a lot of surf, it’s really worthwhile to check the anode every 3-4 years instead of every 5.

Flexi hoses and metal fittings

The braided stainless flexi hoses under your sink may eventually corrode at the braid, and salt can speed up the process. Hoses that may last for 10 years inland can last for a much shorter time near the surf. A flexi hose failure is the most frequent type of apartment flood, and Coogee is all apartments, so that’s a possibility.

Anything exposed outside

All outdoor metal elements are affected by Coogee’s spray; taps, external fittings, pipes on balconies facing the sea, metal brackets and clips corrode much faster. The closer a fitting is to the beach and the headlands, and the more directly it faces the ocean, the faster it corrodes.

Why it usually shows up as a sudden emergency

The sneaky thing about salt corrosion is that it’s invisible until it isn’t. It usually operates inside a tank or from the inside of a hose, so there is usually no warning, until a fitting weeps, a hose bursts or a tank that was fine yesterday is leaking across the floor today. It is no surprise that most of the calls about ‘something going wrong out of the blue’ are from exposed ocean suburbs.

The good news is that these failures can be anticipated. In Coogee’s salty environment, a hot water system with rusty water at the hot tap, water bubbling at the base of the system or just over 10 years old is a good candidate for replacement on a planned basis, not when you’re in the middle of a shower. Flexi hoses are low cost, change them on a regular basis, not when one spills water everywhere.

If a corroded fitting or tank breaks, the answer is the same as with any water emergency: turn off the water at the main; save what you can; and get a licensed plumber out. Since the entire east coast faces the same issue, the crew behind our emergency plumbing in Coogee and surrounding Rose Bay is well-versed in problems caused by corroded fittings and has the necessary parts to fix them right away.

The bottom line

Living close to a Coogee surf beach is a dream come true, but the ocean air that comes with it gets into your plumbing when you’re not looking, and works its way in. The practical solution: monitor your hot water anode more frequently in coastal areas than inland, change flexi hoses every year and treat any hot water system 10 years old or older as living on borrowed time. It’s better to pay attention to it in advance than to be caught out by a failure, and close to the ocean, there’s not much warning at all.