Who to hire for a stormwater drain that overflows

Short answer

A licensed plumber. Stormwater is a separate system from the sewer in most of Australia — different pipes, different destination, different owner — so the water authority's sewer faults line is not the number, and the drain is generally your responsibility to the point it leaves your property.

Soon, not tonightIt will not usually get cheaper by waiting, and it is rarely worth an after-hours rate.

When it is someone else

Calling the wrong trade costs an attendance fee to be told so. These are the cases where this problem belongs to someone other than a Plumber.

  • a landscaper

    the real problem is that the ground falls towards the house. No amount of pipe fixes a site that drains the wrong way.

  • a roofer

    the overflow is at the gutter rather than at ground level. Undersized or blocked gutters and downpipes look like a drainage problem from inside the house.

  • your council

    the overflow is in the street or at the kerb outlet.

What to do before anyone arrives

  1. Watch it in rain, if you safely can, and note where the water first appears. Overflowing at a pit is different from overflowing at the gutter.
  2. Clear the obvious: leaf litter in surface pits, gutters full of debris, a downpipe grate blocked at the base.
  3. Check where the stormwater discharges — to the street kerb, to a legal point of discharge, or to a soak well. A soak well in saturated ground simply stops working.
  4. Photograph the flooding while it is happening. Nobody can see it on a dry day.

What to ask when you book

  • Will you camera the stormwater line to the discharge point?
  • Is the system undersized for the roof area, or is it blocked? Those are different quotes.
  • If it discharges to a soak well, is the well failed or simply in ground that cannot take it any more?

What changes the price

No dollar figures here: this directory holds no price data and an invented range is worse than none. What follows is what makes one of these jobs cost more than the same job next door, which is the part you can actually use when comparing quotes.

  • Blockage versus a system that is undersized or has fallen.
  • Whether a new legal point of discharge is required, which brings the council in.
  • Excavation, and what is over the top of the line.
  • Whether pumping is needed because the site is below the discharge point.

What you can do yourself

Is this licensed work?

Licensed plumbing and drainage work. Discharge points and connections to council stormwater are usually controlled by the council.

There is no national register. Search the licence number with the regulator for the state the work is happening in.

Licensing thresholds and certificate requirements differ by state and change with amending regulation, so this page describes the mechanism rather than quoting a figure. The regulator’s own page is the current answer.

Common questions

Who should I hire for a stormwater drain that overflows
A licensed plumber. Stormwater is a separate system from the sewer in most of Australia — different pipes, different destination, different owner — so the water authority's sewer faults line is not the number, and the drain is generally your responsibility to the point it leaves your property.
Is stormwater the water authority's responsibility?
Usually not in the way the sewer is. The stormwater system on your property is generally yours, and the street system is generally the council's — which is why a stormwater problem does not get the free emergency attendance that a sewer main blockage does.

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Who to hire for

General information about who does what, not advice about your specific job. Licensing, consumer law and council rules differ by state and change; the regulator for your state is the current source. More guides to hiring a tradesperson.