Character homes come with character drainage. If you own or are buying an older Queensland home — a Queenslander, post-war cottage or anything pre-1980s — these are the drainage issues that come up again and again:
- Earthenware (clay) sewer lines. Standard until PVC took over in the 1980s. Laid in short segments with a joint every 600mm, each joint is a potential root entry point and a place for ground movement to open a gap. Root intrusion in earthenware is the single most common defect found in older-suburb drain inspections.
- Ground movement damage. Brisbane's reactive clay soils swell and shrink with the seasons, displacing joints and cracking rigid pipe over decades.
- Bellied or back-graded sections. Soil settlement leaves sections of pipe sagging, so water pools and solids settle — chronic slow drains that clear temporarily and always come back.
- Minimal or improvised stormwater. Many older homes were built with downpipes discharging onto the ground, later "fixed" with ad-hoc pipes of varying quality. Yard drainage problems are common.
- Renovation-era shortcuts. Decades of owner-builder work can leave unvented fixtures, illegal connections (laundry to stormwater is a classic), and mystery pipes no diagram shows.
- Terracotta stormwater and agricultural drains that silted up or collapsed long ago.
None of this means older homes should be avoided — most of these issues are repairable, many without excavation. It means the drains deserve the same scrutiny as the stumps and the roof: a camera inspection tells you which of these issues your particular home actually has, and how far along they are.