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Is it my drain or the council's?

Updated October 2026

This is the question that decides who pays, and in the Redlands you can get a long way towards the answer in ten minutes without spending anything. Redland City Council publishes an unusually specific diagnostic on its sewer blockages page. Most people never find it. What follows is that test, in plain language, with the reimbursement path that sits behind it.

One thing first, because it is the part people get wrong. Where the council's process is concerned, the council's own sewer blockages page is the authority and processes change. Use this page to understand the shape of it, then check the current detail with the council before you rely on it.

Who owns what

The sewer mains in the sewered parts of the Redlands belong to Redland City Council, through its water and wastewater business, City Water (previously Redland Water). The council treats the wastewater at its own plants. Your own drain line, from the house to the connection point, is yours. On acreage and rural blocks that are not connected, the whole system including the septic tank is yours, and the diagnosis is different.

The inspection opening is worth singling out, because it is the fitting the test turns on and it is yours. The council is explicit that the property owner installs and maintains it. It is the capped riser in the yard, usually near the boundary or near where the line leaves the house, and on an older Redlands property it is often buried under a garden bed or a decade of mulch. Finding it before you need it is twenty minutes well spent.

The council's three-step test

Step one: how many fixtures are affected?

If one fixture is slow or blocked and the rest of the house drains normally, the council says the problem is most likely in your home's plumbing. One basin, one shower, one toilet. That is a licensed plumber's job, and the tools that settle it are jet rodding and a CCTV camera.

If everything is backing up at once, keep going.

Step two: watch the overflow relief gully

The overflow relief gully is the grated drain outside, set lower than the lowest fixture in the house. It exists so that if the line blocks, waste water lifts the grate and spills outside rather than coming up through your shower.

The council's test is specific. If the gully overflows while no water is being used anywhere on the property, the blockage is likely to be in the council's sewer main. Before you call, clear any obstruction off the gully, leaves, soil, a pot plant, and check the grate still moves freely, because a gully that cannot lift cannot do its job. Then contact the council.

Step three: the inspection opening with a tap running

Run an indoor tap and watch the inspection opening.

• If it holds water, or drains slowly, contact the council.
• If it stays dry, the problem is in the house plumbing, so call a plumber.

That is the whole test. It costs nothing, and it is the difference between a bill you pay and a repair the council handles.

The reimbursement path, and its conditions

If you call a plumber and the plumber finds the blockage is in the council's main, the council has a process for reimbursing the plumber's cost. Two conditions matter more than the rest.

• A plumber has to confirm the blockage is in the council's main. An opinion is not a finding. A camera inspection with a locator is what produces evidence, which is one more reason the camera is worth the money on a whole-house backup.
• The blockage has to be reported to the council immediately, so that you have a reference number. Prompt reporting is a condition of reimbursement, not a formality. A blockage reported a week later, with the plumber already paid, is a much harder conversation.

This site does not state an amount and does not promise you will be reimbursed. What it does say is that the order of operations matters: confirm, report, get the reference number, then deal with the paperwork. Most people do it the other way around and lose the claim on the timing.

What the plumber actually does to prove it

Three tools answer the ownership question between them. A CCTV camera shows the blockage and the condition of the pipe. A locator on the camera head marks the position on the surface, so you know whether the fault is two metres from the house or out under the footpath. And the inspection opening gives a reference point for which side of the connection the camera is on.

For a recurring problem that always clears and always comes back, the footage usually shows roots at a joint on your side of the connection. That is not a council matter and no amount of reporting will make it one. It is a relining conversation, and in the Redlands it is a common one because of how much jointed clay line is still in the ground under the old bayside suburbs.

If you are not connected at all

A large part of the Redlands has no sewer main in the question. Russell, Macleay, Lamb and Karragarra islands are entirely unsewered. Amity Point is unsewered, and the council states that about half the urban areas of Dunwich and Point Lookout are unsewered. On the mainland the council states that rural non-urban properties in the Redland Bay area and in the Native Dog Creek, Serpentine Creek and Upper Tingalpa Creek catchments use septic or on-site systems.

On those properties there is no council main to find, so there is nothing to report and nothing to reimburse. The tank, the pump and the trenches or irrigation field are all yours. The septic and on-site wastewater page covers how that diagnosis runs instead.

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