Common faults Common Leak Problems We Find
Most leak callouts here trace back to how the area was built. Salisbury was laid out by John Harvey from 1848 along the Little Para River, with stone and red-brick cottages around John Street and Church Street, then large SA Housing Trust streets through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s for explosives factory and rocket project workers. Decades on, the supply lines, drains and gas fittings throughout streets like John Street, Church Street, Park Terrace and Wiltshire Street throw up the same leak patterns:
01
Galvanised supply lines weeping at corroded sections
The 19th-century cottages around John Street and Church Street and the pre-war stock along the Little Para River were originally plumbed with galvanised steel water lines, and many Salisbury homes have only been partially re-piped, leaving corroded sections that weep at pinholes and stain fixtures before they fail outright.
02
Ageing storage hot water units leaking at the base
A large share of post-war Housing Trust homes and 1960s and 1970s infill stock still run electric storage or original-era gas hot water units sized for the original household, and tanks now well past service life often surface first as a slow leak at the base before they fail outright.
03
Clay drain joints weeping at the seams
The older town core and the Housing Trust streets laid out in the 1940s and 1950s drain through earthenware clay pipework that cracks at the joints as the ground shifts through dry summers and lets groundwater track back through the line.
04
Tree-root intrusion at hidden cracks
Mature street and yard trees planted around the post-war Housing Trust grid and along the riverbank reserves at Pitman Park regularly send roots into ageing clay drain lines, opening cracks that then weep back into the soil through the dry summer months.
