Why Coogee’s Apartment Density Makes Plumbing Emergencies Spread
Coogee is one of the most overcrowded areas in the nation as a whole. About 14,600 people live on a little under 2 square kilometres and the houses are what one might expect: apartment blocks in virtually every design since the 1930s stacked up the hillside behind the beach with a few surviving original Victorian cottages and beach houses scattered in between. What a beautiful area to reside in. It also means that if a pipe breaks here, it’s not likely to be a one home issue.
The one and only essential you need to grasp about plumbing emergencies in Coogee is that density. The problem with a burst pipe in a freestanding house is that it will only cause flooding in that house. The same burst becomes a shared crisis in a Coogee apartment block, and most of the suburb is apartment blocks, because water travels.
Why water doesn’t stay put in an apartment
In an apartment block, water follows gravity downward, through the homes of the neighbours. If a failure occurs on an upper floor, it will take the path of least resistance, which could be a gap around a pipe, a riser shaft or a slab penetration, and continue to work its way down, floor-by-floor. Before anyone has figured out where the water is coming from, the resident two or three levels below may see a stain spreading across their ceiling.
By then the damage has crossed several apartments, with their respective owners and furniture, and possibly different insurance companies. One failed fitting becomes a multi-party claim. Which is why, in an apartment-filled, densely built suburb like Coogee, it’s actually much more important to stop the water fast than it would be in almost any other place.
The usual culprits in Coogee blocks
Burst flexi hoses
The most frequent apartment flood we see anywhere in the Eastern Suburbs is a leaky flexible braided hose which is the small connector under the sink and behind the toilet. Their lifespan is about five to ten years and if they burst, they can discharge more than 1,500 litres of water per hour. If it happens while you are at the beach or at work, that is an unattended flood pouring down the building for hours.
Shared sewer stacks
Each apartment building has a vertical sewer stack that conducts waste from all of the units down to the main. A blockage in the stack, typically wet wipes, makes the waste back up at the lowest fixtures first. All the overflow goes into the ground floor and basement units, irrespective of who has been causing it upstairs.
Mixed-era pipework
Coogee has been developing apartments for the past 70 years or more, so there have been a number of plumbing eras. The original 1950s walk-up may still be in use with original galvanised pipe which corrodes from the inside and fails without warning; a block built in the 1970s has its own ageing plumbing; and newer developments have modern plumbing, but are all built in the same dense, stacked layout. The time period dictates how a problem is diagnosed.
Water Coming Through the Ceiling From the Flat Above?
Time is of the essence in a dense block. We respond quickly across Coogee and the Eastern Suburbs, 24 hours a day. Talk to an Emergency Plumber on 1300 026 452.
What to do when it happens
- Locate and turn off your water. Mostly, the isolation valve is located under the kitchen sink or in a laundry cupboard in Coogee apartments. Find yours now so you’re not searching before the flood.
- Advise the unit below. If water is running, it is coming their way, and a knock will give them time to move belongings.
- Inform the building manager or strata. The problem could be a shared problem and they must be informed immediately.
- Take pictures of everything before you do any clean-up, for your insurance company and strata manager.
- Get a licensed plumber. The team behind our emergency plumber based in Coogee and surrounding Rose Bay is onsite regularly and understands the connections of risers and shared systems.
The bottom line
This density is a part of what makes Coogee so attractive, everything’s in walking distance, the beach at the end of the street, life is close together. However, it’s also that density which makes a plumbing failure nearly impossible to just confine to one apartment. Identify the area where your shut-off valve is located, store a phone number for an emergency plumber and don’t assume that a problem on your floor stays on your floor. It moves in a building filled with units stacked up a Coogee hillside.
