Blocked Drains St Ives

Here is what happens on the day: a call comes in, we lock in the earliest slot that suits, and a camera goes to work before anything else is touched. What that inspection usually finds depends heavily on when the house was built.

This suburb only really took shape as a family area once large tracts of rural land were rezoned for housing last century, so much of what stands today is post-war and mid-century brick on big blocks, with unit and townhouse infill added later around the local shopping centre.

That single rezoning wave is unusual. Most Upper North Shore suburbs grew up in overlapping decades, but a large share of homes here effectively arrived within a couple of decades of one another.

That bunching means a lot of drainage is quietly reaching the same age at once.

Original earthenware drainage from that first wave of building is now well past the point where cracks and small offsets start letting roots and silt inside. Newer infill dwellings nearby generally run on more modern pipe, so the fault often depends entirely on which side of that building wave a given block falls on.

A blue gum forest remnant tucked just north of the shopping village is one reason those older lines see so much root pressure, since roots chase moisture wherever a joint has weakened. A national park hemming the suburb's eastern edge adds the same pressure on that side of the ridge.

Tree-root drain clearing and a proper CCTV inspection usually settle which side of that divide a job is on.

Four things account for most of the calls we get from around here.

1. Root intrusion. Mature garden trees and nearby bushland push roots into any older pipe that has cracked or shifted with age.
2. Cracked earthenware. Original clay pipe from the post-war building boom is now old enough that hairline cracks are common.
3. Sloped-block runoff. The undulating drop toward the bushland edge means water and grit gather hard at whichever spot in the yard sits lowest.
4. Stormwater surcharge. Bushland-catchment runoff in a heavy summer storm can overwhelm an older stormwater line faster than a flat-block equivalent would see.

Big established gardens are part of what makes the streetscape here, and it is exactly that mature planting that keeps root crews busy on the older side of the suburb.