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Drains under a Liverpool home, a guide by DottoPipes, pits and who to ring
Liverpool, NSW · A homeowner’s guide

What happens below the grate of a Liverpool home

A guide to the drains under a Liverpool home, published by Dotto: who looks after which pipe, where the rain goes, how to check a flood risk, and what the rules say about hot water and the people who work on it.

Every fact here comes from the body that owns it: Sydney Water, the NSW SES, Liverpool City Council and the NSW Government. Each page links its sources.

A stormwater grate A drawing of a cast-iron stormwater grate seen from above, its bars running top to bottom, with the words Liverpool and Stormwater lettered on the frame. Below it, arrows show water falling through. LIVERPOOL STORMWATER
Pit 00 · General arrangement

Three kinds of water on one block

Wastewater leaves through the house drain to the sewer. Stormwater, the rain that runs off roofs, roads and driveways, travels in a separate set of pipes. Flooding, in the NSW SES’s words, happens when water flows outside its natural course into areas that are usually dry. The drawing below follows the first two from the house to the street.

Beyond your connection, the sewer network is Sydney Water’s. It supplies water and wastewater services across Greater Sydney, and lists a water resource recovery facility at Liverpool as part of its Malabar system.

Three kinds of water on one block A section through a street and a house block, not to scale. Rain runs off the roof into the gutter and downpipe, then through a pipe under the yard to the street gutter at the kerb, and on towards a creek. Inside the house, the toilet and basin drain into the house drain, which runs under the yard past an overflow relief gully near the outside tap, to the point of connection with Sydney Water’s sewer. A tree’s roots reach down towards that connection. Numbers one to eight mark the parts described in the key below. STREET BOUNDARY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Not to scale. For your own block, Sydney Water publishes typical system connection diagrams to help work out where your responsibilities end and its begin.
  1. 1Yours to maintainRoof, gutters and downpipes. Stormwater starts here, and as a property owner you have a role in maintaining the downpipes on your property.
  2. 2On your blockThe property’s stormwater pipe. Stormwater often flows from property drains to street gutters operated by local councils.
  3. 3The street gutter, then the creekGutters may connect to large channels, pipes and creeks. Stormwater is not treated before it reaches creeks and rivers.
  4. 4YoursToilets, sinks and drains, and the house drain that carries their wastewater to the sewerage system.
  5. 5YoursThe overflow relief gully near the outside tap. Wastewater coming out of it is one of the signs of a blockage that Sydney Water lists.
  6. 6The dividing lineThe point of connection. Your wastewater pipes are yours to look after, from the house to the point where they join Sydney Water’s network.
  7. 7Sydney WaterThe wastewater pipes that form Sydney Water’s network.
  8. 8Watch forTree roots, which can enter small cracks in wastewater pipes and keep growing until they block them.
The register

Six pits, six questions

Each guide answers one question a Liverpool householder is likely to have about the water under and around their home.

Who to ring

Three numbers, three kinds of trouble

Each number below is printed as the organisation gives it on its own page, linked beside it.

Sewage overflowing

13 20 90Sydney Water’s faults line, 24 hours a day, for a wastewater overflow on your property or in a public place.

Sydney Water: report a fault

Flood or storm

132 500The NSW SES, for help during a flood, storm or tsunami.

NSW SES: when to call

Life in danger

000Triple Zero, in a life-threatening emergency.

As the NSW SES puts it

The catchment

Two river systems run through Liverpool

Two major rivers run through the Liverpool local government area, the Georges and the Nepean, along with many of the creeks that feed them. The NSW SES describes the Georges River as about 100 kilometres long, flowing through Liverpool, Chipping Norton and Bankstown into Botany Bay, and calls it one of NSW’s most flood-prone areas.

Liverpool City Council says it has developed flood studies and floodplain risk management studies and plans for all major waterways in the area. Pit 03 explains where to find them, and what the NSW SES warnings mean.

Stormwater is not sewage

Wastewater and stormwater are managed in two separate sets of pipes. A stormwater pipe connected the wrong way, or rain getting into the wastewater system, can cause overflows. Pit 02 follows the rain from the roof to the river.