Plumber Greta

Greta dates from the 1860s, when the railway and the collieries built it, and the weatherboard cottages of the Victorian era and the mid-century homes near High Street can still run on galvanised water pipe from that era. Rust narrows the bore over the decades until a shower barely runs. Replacing it with copper or polyethylene starts once the plumber has traced where the old pipe goes.

The large estate on the rise above town has added modern brick-veneer family homes, and with fast volume building come early failures in taps, flexi hoses and cisterns. A braided hose bursting inside a vanity can flood a room there in no time.

The old town stands on higher ground than the Anvil Creek flats, and in a storm the runoff from the estate's high ground pours into the older drainage below.

Area-level figures put frosts at 8.1 a year, and a severe one can be the end of a worn hot water cylinder in the older streets.

At the census there were 3,349 residents in 1,157 dwellings, and separate houses made up 95.9 per cent of the total; area-level figures show 1,419 approvals in the past five years as estate stages open.