High-rise living
Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach are the Gold Coast’s high-rise centre, and Southport has plenty of units too. In a unit block, the first question with any leak is whose pipe it is. Under Queensland body corporate law, a pipe belongs to the lot owner only when it serves that lot alone, sits inside the lot and is not part of a boundary structure. Everything else is common property.
That means a leak can need both a plumber and the body corporate. Water through a ceiling often comes from the unit above, so it helps to have both units checked at the same time.
Canals, filled land and the river
The central Gold Coast is where the city’s canal estates began. Florida Gardens at Broadbeach Waters, announced in 1956, was the first canal-style development. Mermaid Waters was flat grazing land with swamps before its estates were built, and it was named in 1981. Robina was one of Australia’s first master-planned communities, with its first blocks sold in 1981 and land raised using fill dug from its artificial lakes.
Homes on low-lying and filled land need drains that keep their fall. When ground settles, a pipe can sag and hold water, which leads to repeat blockages. A camera inspection shows whether a drain has dipped.
Carrara sits on the Guragunbah Plain, previously known as the Merrimac-Carrara flood plain, beside the lower Nerang River. The river flooded in 2013 and 2017. Keep stormwater pits and your overflow relief gully clear before the wet season.
Council and private pipes
The City of Gold Coast runs water and sewerage for the whole city. It maintains sewer pipes from the main to the connection point, and owners look after the drains and inspection openings on their side.
Suburbs we cover in Gold Coast Central
- Southport
- Surfers Paradise
- Broadbeach
- Benowa
- Bundall
- Ashmore
- Nerang
- Robina
- Carrara
- Mermaid Waters
- Worongary
- Molendinar
- Pacific Pines
