24 hour plumbing in Karabar, NSW
Karabar is a 1960s and 70s suburb on the hill south of the Queanbeyan River, with Karabar High School and a strip of local shops on Cooma Street. It is NSW territory with Canberra-era housing, so the pipes are the same age as Woden's but the licence and the utility are different.
What usually goes wrong in Karabar
- Galvanised and early copper water services bursting on the oldest streets
- Earthenware sewers in rocky, shifting ground cracked and invaded by roots
- Low pressure on the high streets behind Karabar High School and high pressure near the river
- Storage hot water units on their second or third replacement failing in winter
- Frost splitting garden taps and relief lines on the exposed southern slopes
Local notes from the plumbers
Karabar climbs the hill south of the Queanbeyan River along Cooma Street, and most of it was built in the 1960s and 70s in brick veneer on blocks of a size Canberra stopped building decades ago. The water services are copper and, on the earliest streets, galvanised steel, and the sewers are earthenware laid in rocky ground that has moved with every wet and dry cycle since. Roots from the street trees and backyard gums are the usual cause of a blockage, and a camera inspection often shows a cracked pipe rather than one that simply needs jetting. Water pressure varies street by street with the slope, and the higher streets behind Karabar High School run low while the flats near the river run high. Storage hot water units on their second or third replacement fail under winter load, and frost on the exposed southern slopes splits garden taps and relief lines. Karabar is in NSW, so the plumber needs a NSW Fair Trading licence and QPRC handles the mains, the meter and the sewer connection point rather than Icon Water.
Housing in Karabar
1960s and 70s brick veneer homes on large blocks climbing the hill along Cooma Street, a share of older fibro and weatherboard houses on the earliest streets, unit blocks near the Karabar shops and a few newer townhouse developments on subdivided blocks.