Kincumber facts for a plumbing job
Shared walls
At the 2021 Census, 30.0% of occupied homes in the suburb of Kincumber were semis, terraces or townhouses and 65.5% separate houses. Flats were rare, at 4.3%.
Settled owners
31.9% of homes were owned outright and 32.2% mortgaged; 17.8% were rented. The median age was 48.
A treatment plant in the suburb
Central Coast Council runs a wastewater treatment plant at Kincumber. It is one of the sites making recycled water for Council's own use and for watering nearby parks and sporting fields.
Where Council stops
Council looks after the sewer up to the connection point. From there to the house, every pipe is the owner's, and so is the job of keeping the overflow gully clear.
Renovating a townhouse
If your Kincumber home is in a strata scheme, NSW strata law sorts renovations by how much they touch. A bathroom renovation is a major renovation because it involves waterproofing. It needs a special resolution at a general meeting, which fails if more than 25% of the votes cast are against it.
Kitchen work and installing or replacing a heat pump count as minor renovations, which need more than 50% of the votes at a meeting, or the strata committee's approval if a by-law allows. Purely cosmetic changes need no vote. Skip the process and you may have to pay to put things back.
Shared pipes, shared costs
In most NSW strata schemes, plumbing inside your internal walls and your fixtures is yours. Where a pipe runs through a boundary wall or beneath the floor, the owners corporation usually carries it. Your strata plan and by-laws decide the edge cases, so check them before the plumber quotes.
The gully outside
The overflow gully is the grated drain near an outside tap. If the sewer blocks, sewage should spill there rather than inside. Council's charter says owners must keep it unobstructed, so pavers, pot plants and garden beds come off it.
Council also asks you not to dig, build or landscape over or next to its pipes without talking to it first. For a backed-up gully, see Central Coast blocked drains or our guide to the overflow relief gully.
What we would do
In a townhouse, read the strata plan before you call anyone: it shows where your lot ends and the common property starts. For a bathroom job, get the owners corporation's vote before booking the plumber, not after. And walk out to the overflow gully now: if it is buried under a pot or paving, uncover it before the next blockage finds it.