24 hour plumbing in Dickson, Canberra
Dickson is the busiest local centre in the Inner North, with the Chinatown restaurant strip on Woolley Street, a shopping precinct, pool and library, and rapid apartment development along Northbourne Avenue since the light rail opened. The surrounding streets are still mostly single-storey post-war homes on flat blocks.
What usually goes wrong in Dickson
- Root-blocked earthenware sewers under mature street trees in the 1950s streets
- Galvanised water lines never replaced, losing pressure and bursting
- Grease and food waste blocking shared drains under the Woolley Street restaurants
- Flexible hose bursts and common drain blockages in the new apartment buildings
- Basement car parks and driveway drains flooding on flat ground in summer storms
Local notes from the plumbers
Dickson has changed faster than most of the Inner North and the pipework has not always kept up. The 1950s and 1960s homes on the streets around Antill Street are brick or weatherboard ex-govies with earthenware sewers and, in a fair number of cases, galvanised water lines that have never been replaced. Roots from the mature street trees find every cracked joint, and a slow shower drain in Dickson usually means a camera and a cutter rather than a plunger. Around the shops and the Chinatown strip on Woolley Street the restaurants push grease and food waste into shared drains, and the newer apartment blocks along Northbourne Avenue and near the light rail stop add flexible hose bursts, blocked common drains and hot water plant that serves dozens of units. Dickson sits low and flat, so mains pressure is higher than the hill suburbs and old fittings burst under it. The same flat ground means the stormwater has nowhere to go in a summer downpour, and driveway drains and basement car parks flood when the pits are blocked.
Housing in Dickson
1950s and 60s brick and weatherboard ex-govie homes around Antill Street, restaurants and shops on the Woolley Street strip, and new apartment blocks along Northbourne Avenue and around the Dickson light rail stop.