One of our building experts, Tim Wright recently visited an apartment building in Brunswick where they had been having issues with what they thought was a leaking water tank. The problem had been going on for years and residents were concerned for the safety of their cars parked below in the basement.
Prior to going on out to site Tim had reviewed the construction drawings and compared them to what he had been told and nothing really added up.
Tim attended site and made his way to the tank area. He quickly identified that these tanks were part of a storm water retention system. These systems are commonly installed into large buildings in built up areas to act as a shock absorber for the council storm water pipes. Older suburbs like Brunswick where never originally designed to have the level of building coverage we see today so in the event of a heavy rainfall, the storm water system becomes overwhelmed, and flooding can occur. The risk of flooding is reduced by installing these retention systems into new building.
With a simple look at the top of the tank the root cause of the “leak” was revealed. The strainer at the water entry point of the tank had never been cleaned so was blocked. While there Tim did remove the 10 Years of leaves and other muck.
Every time it rained heavily the water would spill out over the top of the tank and ultimately find its way down into the car park.
What the OC had imagined was going to be an expensive and disruptive repair ended up being a simple task added to their cleaner’s annual task list.
