Labrador Plumber & Gas Fitter

Plumbing in Labrador, Broadwater frontage, post-war streets and walk-up blocks

Labrador sits on the western shore of the Broadwater and it was built up earlier and tighter than most of the northern Gold Coast. Walk the streets between the highway and the water and you move through fibro and weatherboard cottages from the post-war years, brick homes from the 60s and 70s, and a scattering of two and three storey walk-up unit blocks that went in wherever a bigger lot came up. Along the Gold Coast Highway there is a working commercial strip of cafes, takeaways, medical suites and small trade premises. Very little of it is new, and that is what defines the plumbing. In a lot of Labrador houses the pipe in the wall is the pipe that went in when the house was built, and the sewer line under the garden is the clay one the original plumber laid.

The question we get asked more than any other in Labrador is some version of "how much longer will this last". Usually the person asking has just paid for a repair on old copper or old galvanised pipe and wants to know whether the next one is coming. So the first thing worth laying out is how we think about that.

A first leak on old pipework is a repair. A second one on the same run is a warning. A third is the run telling you it is finished, and at that point continuing to patch is spending money to postpone a decision rather than to avoid it. Old copper thins from the inside over decades and it thins fairly evenly, so once one point has worn through the neighbouring metres are close behind. Galvanised steel is worse, because it rusts and scales internally until the bore is half what it was, and it tends to let go at the threads. When we are asked to fix a third failure in a house of this age we will do it, but we will also put a price for renewing that run beside it and talk you through the difference. Often the sensible move is a staged renewal, hot side first because heat wears pipe faster, then cold, then the outside lines, spread over a year or two to suit the budget. What we try to steer people away from is a fourth and fifth emergency repair on a run everyone already knows is done, each one at a callout rate, each one leaving the rest of the pipe exactly as tired as it was.

The house side is only half of it. Between the council meter at the front boundary and the house sits the property water service, and in Labrador that is still frequently the original galvanised pipe. You can usually tell without digging. Rusty or brown water on the first draw in the morning, pressure that is fine at the front tap but poor at the back of the house, a meter that keeps ticking when everything is off, or a permanently damp patch along the path line. A galvanised service that has reached that state does not get better and it is normally replaced in one go with new poly pipe, trenched or bored from the meter to the house, with a new isolation valve at each end. It is one of the more satisfying jobs in an old house because the whole place suddenly runs at proper pressure again. Where we are unsure whether a damp patch is the service or something under the slab, acoustic and pressure leak detection settles it before anyone picks up a shovel.

Under the gardens the story is clay. Labrador sewers from the original build were earthenware pipe in short lengths with a joint at every one, and those joints are where roots get in and where the ground moves the pipe out of line. Established gardens make it worse, because the same big trees that make the older streets pleasant have had sixty years to find those joints. The symptom pattern is a drain that clears with the machine and then blocks again in six to eighteen months, or a gully that gurgles and rises when the washing machine empties. On a first visit we clear it. On a repeat visit we want a camera down the line, because clearing a clay drain repeatedly without looking at it is guesswork with a bill attached, and the picture on the screen decides everything that follows.

What follows is usually one of two things. If the pipe is intact but rooted and offset at a few joints, relining is the answer: the line is jetted clean, a resin-soaked liner is drawn through and cured hard against the old wall, and the result is a smooth continuous pipe inside the clay one with nothing dug up. On a Labrador lot where the drain typically runs under a concrete driveway, a carport slab or a paved side path, that matters a great deal, because the cost of breaking and reinstating that surface is often more than the plumbing. If instead the camera shows a section that has actually collapsed, or a long belly holding water where the pipe has sunk, a liner will not fix it and we will say so. Then it is a dig for that section only and a liner for the rest if it makes sense. The point is that the camera decides, not a sales pitch, and you get the footage and a written report so you can see what we saw.

The walk-up blocks are their own world. Most were built in the 60s and 70s as six to twelve flats around a central stairwell, and their plumbing was laid out with the same economy as the rest of the building. A single sewer stack serves a column of flats, one water main branches to all of them, and in some blocks a communal hot water plant in a ground floor room feeds every unit. That arrangement means a problem in one flat is rarely contained to it, and it means the first thing to sort out on any call is who owns the failure and who is authorising the work. Broadly, pipe that serves your flat alone is yours, pipe that serves more than one is the body corporate's, and the boundary is not always where the wall is. Our practice on strata jobs in these blocks is to stop the water or clear the stack first, work out ownership second, and give everyone involved a short written account with photos so the committee can settle who pays without a second visit. We deal directly with letting agents, self-managing committees and the strata managers who look after the larger blocks, and we know that in an older building the isolation valve for a flat may be in the stairwell, in a neighbour's laundry, or missing altogether, so we ask about it before we arrive.

Hot water in Labrador is often overdue. A great many houses and flats here are running a storage tank that is fifteen or twenty years old, and in the older houses the tank is bolted to a fibro wall or standing on a concrete pad that has moved. Replacement is straightforward but the choice of what goes back is worth a conversation. Where there is gas at the property, continuous flow frees up the space and suits a household that runs out of hot water at peak times. Where the property is all electric, a heat pump on the sunny side of the house cuts running costs and attracts the rebate. And where the budget is tight and the existing tank position works, a like-for-like electric storage swap gets hot water back the same day. On the water-facing streets, salt in the air is worth weighing when the unit will sit outside, because exposed casings, valves and brass tapware near the Broadwater do wear faster than they do further west, and a unit tucked on the sheltered side of the house lasts longer than one facing the breeze.

Gas work in the older houses is mostly appliance changeovers and new points: a cooktop swap when the original finally gives up, a bayonet on the deck for the barbecue, or a full changeover from an old gas storage tank to continuous flow. Every gas job in Queensland is licensed work with a compliance certificate at the end, and where we are connecting to older pipework we test the whole installation before we sign it off, because putting a new appliance on the end of a line that has never been checked helps nobody.

The highway strip runs on different rules. A cafe or takeaway that cannot use its kitchen is not trading, so almost everything we do for the commercial tenancies along the Gold Coast Highway is planned around opening hours. Grease is the recurring theme in the food premises: fats set on the pipe wall week by week and an eel only punches through the middle of the build-up, so for a kitchen that generates grease as a normal part of business we would rather schedule a jet clean before opening every few months than get called at lunchtime when the floor waste comes up. Tenancy turnover brings the fitout work, sinks, hand basins, dishwasher and combi oven connections, hot water sized for the actual demand rather than a household, and the backflow device on the water service where the use of the premises requires one, which is a testable assembly with an annual obligation attached rather than something you fit and forget. Medical suites and hairdressers have their own fixture requirements. For all of it we will quote the same job two ways, during trade or outside it, so the owner can see what the disruption is actually worth.

Renovation is where a lot of Labrador's older houses are heading, and a bathroom is the moment to deal with the pipe behind it. Post-war and 60s wet areas were built with waterproofing that would not pass today, so by the time the tiles drum hollow or the paint lifts on the far side of the shower wall, water has usually been in the frame for years. When the wall comes off for a new bathroom we renew the copper in that section as a matter of course, because it is the cheapest that pipe will ever be to replace, and we run the drainage so the new layout works rather than forcing new fixtures onto old falls.

What jobs typically cost in Labrador

These are the guide ranges we publish for the Gold Coast and they apply in Labrador as they do everywhere else. The figure you actually pay is a written fixed price agreed before the work begins.

• Blocked drain cleared with the machine: $250 to $400
• CCTV drain camera inspection: $200 to $350
• Camera, high-pressure jetting and written report: $500 to $900
• Pipe relining, no-dig, per metre installed: $400 to $600 per metre
• Leaking tap repair: $80 to $180 plus parts
• Toilet repair: $120 to $300
• Burst pipe repair, accessible: $250 to $650 plus parts
• Burst pipe under a slab: $1,500 to $4,000
• Electric storage hot water system, supplied and installed: $1,300 to $2,400
• Gas storage hot water system, supplied and installed: $1,800 to $3,200
• Gas continuous flow hot water, supplied and installed: $1,900 to $3,500
• Heat pump hot water, supplied and installed: $2,500 to $4,500 after rebates
• Gas cooktop changeover, like for like: $260 to $480 plus compliance certificate
• After-hours emergency callout: we give you the rate over the phone before anyone gets in the van, then the repair itself is priced on site

Two things push Labrador jobs toward the top of a range and it is better you hear them now. The first is age. A tap set from the 60s with a seized spindle, a stop cock that has not been turned in thirty years, a gully riser that crumbles when the machine goes in, these add time to what would be a quick job on newer hardware. The second is access. Small lots, shared driveways, drains under paving and hot water units in awkward spots mean more care and more setup. Neither is a reason to guess high. It is a reason to look properly, then quote once.

Renewal of an entire pipe run, a galvanised water service, a section of drain excavation or a commercial fitout is priced after we have seen it, and where a repair keeps coming back we put the renewal figure on the same sheet as the repair figure so the two can be compared side by side. Hills Plumbing and Gas holds QBCC plumbing licence 15243081, and gas work is carried out under a separate Queensland gas work licence with a compliance certificate on every job.

How quickly can we get to you in Labrador?

Labrador is close to where a lot of our day-to-day work happens, so a booked job during business hours is usually done the same day or the next morning at the latest. Where a job involves a body corporate or a letting agent, the paperwork is normally the slow part rather than the drive, and we start it while the appointment is being made.

A tip for anyone in an older Labrador house: find your main isolation valve before you need it. It is normally beside the meter at the front boundary and it turns clockwise to close. On pipework of this age the gap between a pipe letting go and the water being off decides whether you are looking at a plumbing bill or a flooring bill, and thirty seconds spent finding the valve on a quiet afternoon is the best free plumbing advice we can offer.

For a genuine emergency, a burst pipe, sewage backing up inside, no hot water for a household with young kids, the phone is answered around the clock and you will get an arrival time based on where the van actually is, typically 60 to 90 minutes, sometimes better, occasionally longer if we are on another emergency. That is an estimate rather than a promise, and if it changes we will call and tell you rather than leave you waiting.