Strata Plumbing in Biggera Waters

The single biggest cost driver on canal-front common property drainage work is the water table. Dig 900 mm on a Paradise Point or Hollywell common driveway and you are into groundwater, sometimes rising and falling with the tide through the day. That means dewatering, shoring where the trench is deep, and more reinstatement than the repair itself would suggest.

What that changes about how a canal scheme should approach repairs:

• Locate before you dig, properly. CCTV and electronic location narrows a repair to a metre or two instead of chasing a line across common ground. On a $200-350 inspection that is money very well spent.
• Consider relining over excavation. No-dig relining at $400-600 per linear metre installed often beats open-cut once dewatering and driveway reinstatement are in the open-cut number.
• Do the whole line while it is open. If a trench has to be dug on common property, extending the repair to cover the rest of a tired section is cheap compared to opening the same ground again in three years.

Tidal stormwater. Canal schemes discharge stormwater to the water, and on a king tide or a storm surge the outfall can be submerged. Where a non-return flap has corroded off or seized open, tidal water backs up the common stormwater line and comes out at the lowest grated pit, usually in a common driveway or a ground-floor courtyard. Owners report it as a blockage. It is not, and rodding it achieves nothing. Checking outfall flaps ahead of storm season belongs on the annual maintenance list for every canal scheme.

Pontoons and jetties as common property. Most canal schemes hold the pontoon, gangway and jetty as common property, and where there is a fresh water hose point or wash-down tap out there, that line and its tap are the body corporate's to maintain. Salt spray and constant movement are hard on them. A seized or weeping pontoon tap is a small job that gets ignored for years because nobody is sure whose it is.

Shared meters, irrigation and pool top-up. Small canal schemes commonly run landscaping irrigation, a common pool and its automatic top-up off one meter. When a solenoid sticks open or an irrigation line pinholes underground, nothing visible happens. The water disappears into ground that is already wet, and the first sign is a common water bill that has climbed with no change in use. Acoustic and thermal leak detection runs $200-500 or more and is the fast way to find it before another quarter of billing goes into the ground.

Backflow on shared systems. Irrigation, pool top-up and any wash-down point are exactly the connections that carry testable backflow prevention devices. Where the device sits on common property, the body corporate carries the testing obligation and the compliance risk if it lapses. We inspect what your scheme actually has, because plenty of small committees do not know a device is there until someone asks.

Canal schemes are usually small, so there is no large-scheme volume to spread costs across, and the ground conditions load the excavation side of any common property drainage job.

• CCTV inspection of common drainage: $200-350
• CCTV, jetting and written report: $500-900
• Pipe relining, no-dig: $400-600 or more per linear metre installed, frequently the cheaper option once dewatering and driveway reinstatement are counted
• Non-invasive leak detection on a common meter: $200-500 or more
• Burst pipe repair, accessible: $250-650 plus parts
• After-hours emergency attendance: rate quoted on the phone before we leave, plus the repair work
• Backflow device testing on irrigation or pool top-up: quoted on inspection

High water table work carries a genuine premium over the same repair inland. We say so in the quote and show the committee what the no-dig alternative costs alongside it, so the decision is made on numbers rather than on which trade turned up first.