A post hole in the wrong spot
In April 2026 a Heathridge homeowner asked us to camera a short stormwater line down the side of the house. A fencing installer had drilled down to set a new post and said they had seen a stormwater pipe but hadn’t cracked it. The owner wasn’t so sure. The worry was that the post had either broken the pipe or gone straight through the soakwell.
The catch was that the whole run, pipe and soakwell, sat under a concrete pad. Nobody could look without breaking concrete, so the job was booked as a camera inspection to find out before anyone started digging.
What we expected to see
The line itself is short. From the downpipe it drops through one 90 degree bend, then runs about a metre into the soakwell. A soakwell is a buried chamber that takes roof water and lets it soak away into the sand, which is why most Perth homes have one or two tucked under lawns, gardens and paving.
On a run that short, a drain camera tells you a lot quickly. We ran the camera through the bend and followed the pipe towards the soakwell, with a locator on the slab above tracking where the camera head was.
A wall of concrete
When the camera reached the soakwell, it ran into a solid wall. Where there should have been an open chamber, there was set concrete packed hard against the end of the pipe.
Talking it through on site, it turned out five bags of concrete had gone into what looked like a small post hole. That much concrete doesn’t fit in a post hole. Our tech’s read was simple: the concrete hadn’t stayed in the post hole. It had been filling up the soakwell.
The branch line nobody mentioned
The camera found one more thing worth knowing. Just past that first 90 degree bend, a branch line joins the run, picking up the other downpipe on that side of the house. So the soakwell wasn’t only taking water from one downpipe. Two were feeding into a chamber that was now mostly concrete.
That matters for whatever happens next. A soakwell full of concrete can’t hold or soak away water the way it was built to. Knowing the layout means any repair can be planned around both lines, not just the one the owner knew about.
Before you dig near a downpipe
- Find the stormwater first. Downpipes almost always lead somewhere underground. If you’re putting in posts, a camera and locator can trace the pipe and the soakwell before the auger goes in.
- Watch the concrete count. If a post hole swallows far more concrete than it should, stop and ask where it’s going.
- Check before you break the slab. A camera inspection shows what’s under a pad without lifting it, so you only cut where the problem actually is.
If you think something has gone into your stormwater or soakwell, call 0499 281 430. We can camera the line and show you what’s down there, and if it’s a blockage rather than damage, our blocked drains page explains how we clear it.
More on blocked drains in Heathridge, or see more recent jobs.
