Perth sits on sand, which is the reason soakwells work here and the reason nobody talks about them anywhere else. Rain off your roof goes into a pit in the ground and soaks away, rather than running into a street drain — and in Western Australia keeping that water on your own property is not optional, it is a condition of the approval on almost every house, patio and extension built in the last few decades.
When it works, you never think about it. When it stops working, you find out during the first serious downpour of winter: water sheeting across the patio, a puddle that will not go, or a downpipe backing up and running down a wall.
What we handle
- New soakwells sized and installed for a house, patio, shed or extension
- Replacing collapsed or crushed soakwells, including old leach drains
- Digging out silted-up soakwells and getting them draining again
- Downpipe and spoon-drain connections into the soakwell system
- Surface and grated drains across driveways, patios and side paths
- Diagnosing where the water is actually coming from before anything is dug
Worth knowing
Sizing is set by your council
Every local government sets its own required soakwell capacity, worked out from the roof and paved area draining into it. The numbers differ between councils and they change, so we work yours out from your actual roof area and the current requirement where you live rather than from a rule of thumb. If the work is tied to a building approval, the council's figure is the one that has to be met.
Near the river, the water table matters
In the lower-lying parts of Shelley, Rossmoyne and along the Canning, the winter water table can come up far enough that a soakwell is trying to drain into ground that is already wet. That is a design problem rather than a blockage, and the fix is different — usually depth, capacity and placement rather than digging the same pit out again.
Not every wet patch is stormwater
A patch of ground that stays wet through summer is more likely a leaking supply line or an irrigation fault than a stormwater problem. It is worth ten minutes of diagnosis before anyone quotes you for excavation.
Common questions
How many soakwells do I need?
It depends on the roof and paved area draining into them and on your council's current requirement, which is why there is no honest single answer. As a shape of the thing, a typical Perth house needs several, not one. We measure the area, check the requirement where you live, and tell you the number before we quote.
My soakwell overflows every winter. Does it need replacing?
Not always. The three common causes are a pit that has silted up with sand and leaf litter, a pit that has partially collapsed, and a system that was never big enough for the roof area in the first place. Only the third one means starting again, and the first is often a day's work.
Do I need a soakwell for a new patio or extension?
Almost certainly. Any new roofed or paved area adds run-off, and the approval for it will generally require that run-off to be kept on the property. It is much cheaper to allow for it during the build than to retrofit around a finished patio.
Can you connect my downpipes to an existing system?
Yes, provided the existing system has the capacity to take them. If a previous owner has added a patio and simply run the downpipe onto the paving, that is exactly the job — but we check the soakwell can handle the extra area before connecting it, otherwise the problem just moves.