The North Shore has the highest tree canopy in Sydney sitting directly over some of its oldest earthenware drains, on ground where sandstone is often less than a metre down. Almost everything we get called to here comes back to one of those three facts.
Three quick steps. Every enquiry answered within 12 hours. If it's urgent, call.
Could not send just now. Call Luke 0423 213 079 or Zach 0402 273 744, or email admin@bmadvanced.com.au
Burst pipes, no water, sewage coming up. Someone answers the phone at 2am and we come out seven days a week.
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Slow drains and gurgling toilets. We put a camera down, find what is actually causing it, and clear it properly.
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No hot water, a gas smell, or an old unit that has finally given up. Licensed gas and hot water work.
Read more →B&M Advanced Plumbing is a licensed plumbing, drainage and gasfitting business working across the North Shore and Hornsby Shire, including St Ives, Wahroonga, Turramurra, Pymble, Gordon, Killara, Lindfield, Hornsby, Waitara, Asquith, Pennant Hills, Beecroft, Epping, Lane Cove and Hunters Hill. The most common work in this area is root intrusion in old earthenware sewer lines, pipe relining under driveways and heritage properties, leaks in ageing copper and galvanised supply pipe, and stormwater on steep sandstone blocks. Emergencies are answered 24 hours a day on 0423 213 079 and 0402 273 744, and every website enquiry gets a reply within 12 hours.
Burst pipes, no water, sewage backing up, gas you can smell. Two mobiles, both answered around the clock.
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Blocked drains, camera inspections, jet blasting, relining and sewer repairs. We find the cause, not just the blockage.
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Hot water repairs and changeovers, licensed gasfitting, and rough-in and fit-off for bathrooms and kitchens.
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Common property and lot work, written reports for the strata file, and maintenance scheduled around trading hours.
Read more →The pattern on the North Shore is fairly consistent. These are the ones worth acting on.
If you have a big tree and an old house and you have never had the drains looked at, a camera inspection is the cheapest useful thing you can do.
Emergencies go to the phone and get answered whatever the hour. Anything that can wait goes through the form and gets a reply within 12 hours.
Roughly when it was built, what the drains are likely to be, whether there are large trees, and whether the property is heritage listed or in a conservation area. All of that changes the approach here.
On drainage that usually means clearing and then putting a camera down, because on this housing stock the pipe itself is the most likely culprit.
Especially the relining versus excavation choice, which on a heritage property or under a sandstone driveway is a big difference in both cost and disruption.
Boots off, drop sheets down, drain areas hosed and disinfected. Gas work comes with a compliance certificate.
B&M Advanced Plumbing is Luke and Zach. When you ring, one of us picks up and one of us turns up. There is no dispatcher deciding which subcontractor is closest, and no commission-based salesperson writing up your quote.
Between us that is more than thirty years of plumbing, drainage and gas work, and a lot of it on exactly this kind of property: Federation and interwar homes with original earthenware drains, mature trees over the top of them, sandstone underneath, and a council tree application standing between you and the obvious solution.
The way we work is simple. We look at the job, we tell you what it needs and what it will cost, and then you decide. Licensed and insured, NSW contractor licence 501562C.
If you have lived here a while, none of this will surprise you. If you have just moved in, it explains a lot.
Ku-ring-gai has one of the highest canopy covers in Sydney. Council's 2022 mapping put canopy at roughly 35 per cent across the low-density residential zone, and about 80,000 trees in that zone alone. Beautiful streets, and a great deal of root mass sitting directly over century-old clay sewers.
Under Ku-ring-gai's controls a tree means anything 5 metres or more tall or with a trunk 150mm or more in diameter at ground level, and work on it generally needs a council tree application. On a heritage item or in a Heritage Conservation Area there are no exemptions at all. So the realistic fix for roots in your drain is usually to seal the pipe, not to remove what is growing above it.
Large parts of the Upper North Shore sit in Heritage Conservation Areas, and in the Killara area in particular a very high proportion of properties are heritage listed. Digging a trench across the front of a listed Federation home is a different conversation from digging up a lawn, which is why relining from inside the pipe is so often the sensible answer here.
Hawkesbury sandstone sits shallow across much of the area, and drains were frequently laid in trenches cut into rock. Water travels over sandstone rather than soaking into it, so runoff concentrates and moves fast, and any excavation is slower and more expensive than the same job on soil.
The land falls away into gullies and creek lines all through here. Houses built into a slope receive water from uphill, so drainage work is usually about intercepting flow above the building and getting it around and away, plus subsoil drainage behind retaining walls.
The original housing through Wahroonga, Turramurra, Killara, Gordon and Lindfield is old enough that earthenware sewers and galvanised steel supply pipe are live issues. Galvanised corrodes from the inside, which shows up as poor pressure, discoloured water and eventually pinhole leaks inside walls.
No price list, because a real quote depends on what is in front of us. We always tell you the number before we start. What moves it on North Shore properties:
If a repair is going to fail again in six months, we will tell you, even when the repair is the easier sale. And where relining and excavation are both genuinely possible, we will price both so you can see the difference for yourself.
Sample notes for the site. We'll put live Google reviews here as they come in.
Third blockage in two years. These two actually put a camera down and showed me the root mass at a cracked joint, then relined it. No trench through the front garden, which was the part I was dreading.
Pressure had been dropping for years and the water ran brown in the mornings. They found the corroded galvanised section, explained what the rest of it looked like, and did not push me into replacing the lot.
Water was coming down the driveway off the neighbouring block every time it rained. They put in a proper interception drain and it has been dry since.
Every part of Sydney has its own plumbing character. On the North Shore it is unusually clear-cut, and it comes down to three things that all happen to be true at once.
The canopy through Ku-ring-gai is among the densest in Sydney. Council's 2022 aerial mapping put canopy cover at roughly 35 per cent across the low-density residential zone, amounting to something like 80,000 trees in that zone alone, and Council's Urban Forest Strategy is aiming to push it higher again. It is what makes these streets what they are, and it is also an enormous volume of root mass sitting over drainage that was laid a century ago.
The mechanism is always the same. A root does not break a sound pipe. It finds an existing gap at a joint or a hairline crack, gets in because a sewer is a dependable source of water and nutrients, and then thickens each season, prising the fault wider. By the time you have a blockage, the root mass in there has usually been growing for years.
People reasonably assume the fix is to deal with the tree. Under Ku-ring-gai's controls a tree is any perennial plant 5 metres or more in height, or with a trunk 150mm or more in diameter measured at ground level, and work on it generally requires a tree application assessed against guidelines that start from a presumption of retention. On heritage items and in Heritage Conservation Areas, no exemptions apply at all. Hornsby Shire has its own equivalent controls.
So the practical answer is almost always to make the pipe root-proof instead. A relined section is continuous with no joints, which removes the entry point entirely while the tree stays exactly where it is. That is why we do so much relining in this part of Sydney, and it is not a sales preference, it is what the planning controls and the housing stock together make sensible.
Hawkesbury sandstone sits shallow across much of the area, and a great deal of the original drainage was laid in trenches cut into it. This matters twice. Water will not soak into sandstone, so runoff concentrates and moves fast, which is why stormwater on these blocks is about interception rather than absorption. And excavation in rock is slow and expensive, so avoiding a trench is worth considerably more here than it would be on a sandy or clay block.
Large parts of the Upper North Shore sit within Heritage Conservation Areas, and in the Killara area in particular a very high proportion of properties are heritage listed. If your drain runs under a listed frontage or a conservation-area streetscape, the cost and complication of excavating is a completely different order of magnitude from digging up a back lawn. This is another reason no-dig repair dominates our work here.
The Federation and interwar homes through Wahroonga, Turramurra, Killara, Gordon and Lindfield are old enough that galvanised steel supply pipe is a live issue. It corrodes internally, narrowing the bore, so you lose pressure and get discoloured water in the mornings, and eventually it breaches at a pinhole somewhere inside a wall. If we open up a section and find it heavily corroded, we will show you what it looks like inside and give you an honest view on whether patching one hole is worth doing or whether you are better off replacing that run. It is your call either way.
Luke is on 0423 213 079 and Zach is on 0402 273 744, around the clock. For anything that can wait, use the form and you will hear back within 12 hours.
Call for anything urgent, day or night. Otherwise send the form and you will hear back within 12 hours. St Ives, Wahroonga, Turramurra, Pymble, Gordon, Killara, Lindfield, Hornsby and everywhere between.
Three quick steps. Every enquiry answered within 12 hours. If it's urgent, use the numbers.
Could not send just now. Call Luke 0423 213 079 or Zach 0402 273 744, or email admin@bmadvanced.com.au
