Hire a Plumber Bunbury and South West WA 2026 - Costs and Jobs Explained

Hiring a Plumber in Bunbury and the South West, Task by Task

Plumbing across Bunbury and the South West in 2026 runs from about $145 for a tap repair through to $29,000 for an onsite wastewater system installed on the Leeuwin Naturaliste ridge, and the spread comes almost wholly from the ground and the servicing a property has, never from the tradesperson. The sections that follow put a price on each task and say what the plumber is doing to earn it.

The work falls into four categories here. First is the unplanned repair, meaning the blocked drain, the burst pipe and the hot water unit that died overnight. Ground work is the category the South West has far more of than Perth, meaning trenching through clay and rock, stormwater dispersal where nothing soaks away, and the movement reactive soil puts through buried pipework. Supply work covers the tanks, pumps and bottled gas that unserviced properties depend on. And compliance work covers the trade waste, backflow and wastewater approvals that the food premises and rural lots of this region carry.

What Plumbing Costs in Bunbury and the South West

For identical indoor work, South West rates run slightly above what Perth charges, and the statewide bands in our WA plumbing services guide still frame the region. The gap opens properly once a job goes below ground, because the ground here is clay and rock where Perth is sand, and that single difference reverses several pricing assumptions a metropolitan quote is built on.

Indoor work in this region holds very few surprises. Expect $130 to $290 for a business hours attendance covering the first hour, and $95 to $175 an hour after that, with the premium over Perth reflecting travel across a region two hundred kilometres deep. A leaking tap is $145 to $330, a toilet suite replaced on an existing connection is $420 to $990, and a basin mixer swapped is $230 to $500. Excavation is where the region parts company with Perth altogether. Trenching through lateritic clay runs $190 to $420 a metre, against $90 to $190 in dune sand, because clay has to be cut and lifted and it behaves differently wet to dry. Where the trench meets granite or cemented laterite, which happens readily through the Ferguson Valley, Donnybrook and the scarp country, a breaker or a rock saw is involved and the rate reaches $380 to $820 a metre.

That cost inverts the repair decision for drainage faults. In Perth, open excavation is so cheap that relining is commonly the dearer answer. Here the arithmetic runs the other way, and a reline at $280 to $620 a metre, covered in our pipe relining and drain repairs guide, regularly undercuts a dig that has to get through rock. Anyone quoting South West drainage on eastern seaboard or Perth habits will land on the wrong method, and the camera footage is what settles it.

The other local items are the two independent water utilities with their own charges, bottled gas across most of the region in place of a reticulated supply, flexible connections at $480 to $1,300 on reactive clay, meaning soil that swells and shrinks with the seasons, and stormwater that has to be dispersed through engineered trenches because the ground will not take a soakwell. None of those are faults to be fixed. Each one is a condition of plumbing a property in this part of the state.

Aqwest, Busselton Water and Water Corporation

Almost every town in Western Australia buys its scheme water from one supplier. The South West is the exception, and it is the only part of the state where that matters to a plumbing quote. Bunbury is supplied by Aqwest, an independent board that has run the town water since 1906, Busselton is supplied by Busselton Water on the same model, and everywhere else in the region is Water Corporation.

In practice that means connection applications, meter work, standpipe permits, backflow requirements and the fees attached to all of them go to three different organisations depending on which street the property is in. A plumber who works mainly in Perth will lodge with Water Corporation out of habit and the application will go nowhere, which costs a fortnight on a job that had a settlement date attached to it. New connections are where the difference shows up in dollars. A new residential water connection sits between $1,200 and $4,800 across the three suppliers depending on the main, the distance and whether a road crossing is involved, and each supplier publishes its own schedule. Aqwest and Busselton Water both list their fees directly, so the figure in a quote can be checked against the source before you accept it.

Water chemistry differs too, because the three supplies draw from different sources. Bunbury and Busselton both run on groundwater drawn from local bores, which arrives harder than much of the Perth supply, and harder water leaves scale on tap seats, element surfaces and shower roses. That shortens the life of a hot water element and it explains why a tap in Bunbury needs reseating sooner than the same tap in Perth. Sewerage is a separate question again, since both Aqwest and Busselton Water supply drinking water only and Water Corporation runs the sewer in those towns. So a Bunbury property can quite legitimately have two utilities involved in one bathroom renovation, one for the water and one for the wastewater, and the paperwork has to go to both.

Reactive Clay and Pipework That Moves

Perth plumbers rarely think about ground movement because sand does not move. Clay does, and the clays through Dardanup, Capel, Harvey, Donnybrook and the inland towns are reactive, meaning they swell when they take up water and shrink when they dry out. Across a South West winter and summer that movement can be fifty millimetres or more at the surface, and everything buried in it moves too. What that does to plumbing is predictable once you know to look for it. Rigid connections where a pipe enters a slab are the first to fail, because the slab and the surrounding soil move at different rates and the pipe is held at both ends. The symptom is a leak that appears in late summer or early winter and then stops as the ground cycles, and a plumber who hears about the timing has already narrowed the cause.

The fix on new work is cheap and the fix afterwards is not. Flexible connections at every penetration, articulated joints on long runs and a sand bedding layer around the pipe all cost very little at installation. Retrofitting them to an existing house runs $480 to $1,300 depending on how many penetrations are involved and how the slab is finished, and it is still the better value because the alternative is paying for the same leak repeatedly. Site classification is the formal version of all this, since a soil report assigns a reactivity class before a house is built and the plumbing should be detailed to suit whatever class it returns. The structural provisions come through the National Construction Code published by the Australian Building Codes Board, with the referenced soil and footing standards available from Standards Australia. On a renovation the original report repays the effort of finding it in the house file.

Drainage on reactive clay has one more trap. Water escaping from a leaking pipe or a badly placed downpipe discharge wets the clay locally, that patch of ground swells while the rest does not, and the differential movement cracks the slab above it. So a leak on clay becomes a structural problem waiting to happen, where the same leak in Perth sand would have run away harmlessly. Extending the discharge with proper gutters and downpipes is a great deal cheaper than underpinning.

Granite, Laterite and What You Dig Through

The spoil heap tells you what the job will cost before anybody quotes it. Coastal Bunbury, Busselton and Dunsborough sit on sand that digs much like Perth. Move inland a few kilometres and the profile turns to orange lateritic clay with ironstone gravel through it, and further in again, through the Ferguson Valley, Donnybrook, Nannup and the scarp, granite appears close enough to the surface to meet a trench.

Laterite is the middle case and the most common. It holds ironstone nodules and occasional cemented bands, so a bucket cuts it but slowly, and the rate lands at $190 to $420 a metre. Where a cemented band or a granite floater turns up, and that happens unpredictably, a breaker comes out and the metre rate for that section jumps. This is why a competent South West quote states the ground assumption and prices rock as a rate per metre beyond it.

Granite proper presents a different trade problem again. It cannot be dug and has to be broken, sawn or in rare cases bored, at $380 to $820 a metre, and the spoil has to be carted because it will not backfill neatly. On a sewer run to a rear building or a long water service across a block, rock can double the project cost, so establish it before the design is settled, since routing around rock is cheaper than going through it. Because of all this, trial holes earn their money here in a way they never do in Perth. Two or three test pits along the proposed route at $280 to $700 total will tell a contractor what the ground is and let them quote a firm price instead of a rate with an open end. On any job of excavation and earthmoving scale, that is the cheapest certainty available.

Stormwater Where the Ground Will Not Soak

The South West takes 700 to 1,100 millimetres of rain a year depending how far south and how far inland you are, against roughly 730 in Perth, and most of it falls between May and September. That volume arriving on ground that will not absorb it is the defining stormwater problem for the region, and it is the opposite of the Perth problem, where there is less rain and the sand swallows everything. A soakwell installed in clay simply does not work. The chamber fills during the first serious rain, the clay around it accepts water at a trickle, and by the second storm it has become a buried tank with nowhere to send anything. Plenty of South West houses have soakwells installed by builders who used a Perth detail without thinking about the soil, and the owners have been living with winter pooling ever since, usually blaming their blocked drains for it.

What works instead depends on the fall available. Where a street kerb or a council drain can be reached, piping to it is the simplest answer and the local government will say whether a connection is permitted. Where it cannot, the design shifts to dispersal, meaning a long shallow trench filled with aggregate that spreads the water over a large area of soil so the slow percolation rate still copes, at $1,800 to $6,400 for a domestic installation.

Rainwater tanks do real work here beyond supplying water to the house. A tank intercepts roof water before it reaches the ground, taking load off whatever disposal system follows, and in a region with this much rainfall a modest tank fills repeatedly through winter. Combining a tank with overflow to a dispersal trench is the usual compromise, and stormwater drainage work on clay almost always ends up as some version of it. Avoid discharging anywhere near the footings, for the reason set out in the clay section above. Water that soaks in beside a slab swells the clay locally and cracks the slab, so every downpipe and every overflow needs to be taken well clear of the building. That detail costs a few hundred dollars at most and it prevents the single most expensive failure a house on clay can have.

Hot Water Without Reticulated Gas

In Perth the default hot water answer is natural gas, because the reticulated network reaches almost every established suburb. Across most of the South West there is no reticulated gas at all. Parts of Bunbury and Australind have it, and beyond those the choice is bottled gas, electric, solar or a heat pump, which makes the fuel decision genuinely open and the economics quite different.

Electric heat pumps have become the common replacement across the region, at $3,100 to $6,200 installed before any rebate, from makers such as Sanden, Reclaim and Rheem. They suit the South West climate reasonably well, since the winters are mild by national standards and the units keep working, and the running cost compares favourably against bottled gas. The outdoor unit does need somewhere sheltered and somewhere its fan will not annoy a neighbour. Bottled gas storage and continuous flow units remain common, particularly on rural properties already running a cylinder bank for cooking. A Rheem or Dux storage unit replaced runs $1,600 to $3,400 and a Rinnai continuous flow unit $1,900 to $4,200, with the installation including the regulator, the cylinder clearances and the pigtails. The running cost per litre of hot water is the highest of any option here, the trade for not needing a large electrical supply.

Solar with gas or electric boost makes more sense here than most people expect at $3,900 to $7,800, because the summers are long and the roof orientation on South West housing is often good. The constraint is winter, when a solar system in Pemberton or Manjimup will lean on its booster for weeks, so the booster sizing matters as much as the collector area. hot water system installation sets out how each fuel flows through to the final figure. Water hardness is the local complication on top of all that. Both of those towns run on local groundwater that arrives harder than much of the Perth supply, and scale deposits on an electric element or inside a continuous flow heat exchanger reduce efficiency and then cause failure. Descaling a continuous flow unit at $220 to $480 every few years pays for itself on hard water, and an element in a storage tank will want replacing sooner than the warranty period suggests.

Bottled Gas and What It Changes

Where there is no gas main, gas arrives in cylinders, and liquefied petroleum gas, known as LPG, is not simply natural gas in a bottle. It is a different fuel with a different calorific value and a different supply pressure, so appliances are built for one or the other and converting between them means changing injectors and recommissioning the appliance. That matters most when somebody moves an appliance. A gas cooktop brought down from a Perth house will not run correctly on bottled gas until it is converted, and a conversion kit plus the gasfitter time runs $180 to $480 per appliance. Running a natural gas appliance on LPG without conversion produces a sooty yellow flame and incomplete combustion, both inefficient and genuinely dangerous in an enclosed room.

The installation itself has requirements a reticulated connection does not. Cylinders have to sit outdoors on a firm base with set clearances from windows, doors, drains and ignition sources, the regulator and the changeover valve are part of the work, and the whole installation is tested and certified on completion by a licensed gasfitter. A domestic twin cylinder bank installed with the gas fitting and appliance pipework to the house costs $900 to $2,600 depending on the run. Suppliers across the region include Kleenheat and Elgas along with regional agents, and the cylinder arrangement is either exchange bottles or a leased installation refilled on site. The choice affects running cost more than most people check, so ask what a full changeover costs before settling on a supplier. Any gas fitting work carries its own notification obligation separate from the plumbing one.

Holiday Homes and Intermittent Occupancy

Dunsborough, Yallingup, Margaret River, Gracetown and Augusta carry thousands of houses that are occupied for a few weeks a year, and a house that sits empty develops plumbing faults a lived in house never gets. Plumbers through the ridge towns spend a good share of their winter on exactly this, and the faults are predictable enough to be prevented. Dry traps are the most common and the most misdiagnosed. A floor waste or a rarely used basin loses its water seal to evaporation in a few weeks, and sewer gas then comes back up through it, so the owner arrives to a house that smells of drains and assumes something has broken. Nothing has broken at all. Running water into every fixture clears it, and a trap primer or a sealed floor waste insert prevents it recurring for $90 to $280.

A burst pipe in an empty house is the expensive one. A failure that would be a mopped floor in an occupied house runs for days or weeks unattended, and water damage claims from South West holiday houses are a familiar item for insurers. A main stop tap turned off at every departure costs nothing, and a device that shuts the supply automatically on detecting a flow anomaly runs $600 to $1,900 installed, which the emergency plumbing figures above make look cheap. Short stay letting adds obligations the owner may not have met. A property let commercially can bring requirements around hot water temperature limits at bathroom outlets and, depending on the arrangement, backflow prevention, and the local government is the authority on which rules apply to which letting model. Worth settling before a guest is scalded rather than afterwards.

Effluent Over Cave and Karst Country

The Leeuwin Naturaliste ridge from Yallingup down to Augusta is limestone, and limestone dissolves, which is how the cave systems the region is known for came to exist. Ground that behaves this way is called karst, meaning the water does not percolate slowly through soil but finds fissures and travels fast and far underground, sometimes emerging kilometres away. For plumbing work that carries one serious consequence. Effluent disposed of into karst ground is not filtered by the soil the way a conventional leach drain assumes, so it can reach groundwater and cave systems largely untreated. Because of that, onsite wastewater disposal across the ridge is controlled more tightly than almost anywhere else in the state, and the approval conditions can require a treatment system where a plain septic tank would have been accepted a few kilometres inland.

What that produces is an application to the local government for any new or replacement system, with the approved apparatus list held by WA Health and additional conditions around setbacks from fissures, minimum soil depth over rock and sometimes a sealed irrigation field. The installed cost lands between $14,000 and $29,000, and the assessment takes weeks rather than days, so a failed system on the ridge is not a problem to leave until it becomes urgent. Water supply over karst has its own quirk, which is that a bore into limestone can produce well or produce nothing at all a short distance away, since the yield depends on intersecting a fissure. Rainwater tanks are consequently more common through the ridge country than bores, and rainwater tank plumbing with a pressure pump is the standard arrangement on an unserviced lot there.

Unsewered Karri Country

Inland and south the towns get smaller and the servicing thins out. Nannup, Bridgetown, Balingup, Boyup Brook, Manjimup and Pemberton have sewered town centres and very little beyond them, so the surrounding properties supply their own water, treat their own wastewater and manage their own fire protection. Plumbing out there is a different job to plumbing in Bunbury.

Water usually comes from rainwater tanks, a dam, a bore or some combination, and each needs hardware. A pressure pump sized to the house and the head runs $820 to $2,500 installed from makers such as Davey, Onga and Grundfos, and tank supply also wants first flush diverters, inlet screens and the plumbing separation that keeps any scheme or dam top up out of the drinking tank. Filtration and ultraviolet disinfection, which uses UV light to inactivate organisms, adds $900 to $3,200 where the supply needs it. Wastewater inland is more straightforward than on the ridge, since the soils generally percolate and the karst controls do not apply. A conventional septic tank with leach drains remains acceptable in many locations at $7,000 to $13,000, and an aerated system where the site demands one costs $14,000 to $24,000 with quarterly servicing at $400 to $760 a year. Local government assessment still comes first in every case.

Bushfire is the serious one, because this is heavily forested country and the risk through a karri summer is real. the Department of Fire and Emergency Services publishes the preparation guidance, and the plumbing side of it covers a dedicated static water supply with an offtake the local brigade can couple to, a pump that runs without mains power, and tank fittings that will not melt. A garden tap on a poly tank is of very little use to a crew. Distance is the last factor and it shows on every invoice. A plumber travelling to Pemberton from Bunbury is most of a day gone before any work starts, so rural rates carry a zone loading or a minimum half day attendance. Property owners inland learn to keep a running list and book several jobs into one visit, the single largest saving available to them.

Cellar Doors, Cafes and Trade Waste

The South West has a dense concentration of food and beverage premises for its population, between the Margaret River cellar doors, the Dunsborough and Busselton cafe strips and the breweries through the Ferguson Valley. Commercial plumbing on those premises is a different regulatory animal to domestic work, and the costs sit in the compliance rather than in the pipework. Trade waste consent sits at the centre of it. Anything other than ordinary domestic sewage discharged to the sewer needs a trade waste consent from the sewerage authority, which through this region is Water Corporation, and the consent sets what may be discharged and what pretreatment is required. A food premises generally needs a grease arrestor sized to its fixtures at $3,400 to $11,000 installed, plus scheduled pump outs and keeping the records.

Backflow prevention is the second item and it catches people. A commercial premises with higher hazard equipment needs testable backflow prevention devices at the connection, tested annually by an accredited tester with the certificate lodged. Installation runs $900 to $3,600 depending on size and the annual test $180 to $420 per device, and backflow prevention testing explains where the hazard ratings land. A winery or brewery adds a third layer, because the discharge is high in organic load and seasonal, so a crush or a brew day can breach a consent that the premises meets comfortably the rest of the year. Those sites generally need balance tanks, pH correction or both, and the design belongs with somebody who has done it before. Advice on licences and approvals for a new premises is collected through the Australian Business Licence and Information Service.

Finding Leaks in Clay Ground

Clay hides a leak differently to sand. In Perth, water escaping from a pipe runs down and sideways through permeable sand and may surface metres from the break. In clay it has nowhere to go quickly, so it saturates a small area, softens it, and frequently shows up as a boggy patch almost directly above the fault, which makes burst pipe repairs easier to locate here. That makes South West leaks easier to locate and more damaging while they run.

The investigation sequence still starts free of charge. Close every fixture in the house, watch the water meter, and a dial that creeps with nothing running has confirmed a leak on the supply side. Closing the stop tap at the meter and watching a second time separates a leak inside the property boundary from one on the service line before it. In Bunbury and Busselton the meter belongs to the local water board, so a leak on the authority side is reported to them. From there the tools are the same as anywhere, with acoustic detection on pressurised lines, tracer gas where acoustics cannot resolve the position, and thermal imaging for hot water lines under slab or tile. Water leak detection across a whole property costs $400 to $980 here, a little above the metropolitan figure because of travel, and it costs far less than lifting floor or breaking paving at a guess.

The reason to find a clay leak quickly goes beyond the water bill. A saturated patch of reactive clay swells, the surrounding ground does not, and the differential movement that follows cracks slabs, distorts door frames and damages brickwork. So a leak that would have been a nuisance in Perth sand is a structural risk here, and the repair economics change accordingly. Slab leaks bring the same decision as everywhere, which is whether to break concrete or to abandon and reroute. Through the roof space or around the outside of the building is frequently both cheaper and far more serviceable later, and on clay it has the added advantage of avoiding a large excavation beside the footings. A quote that goes straight to breaking the slab without pricing a reroute has skipped the better answer.

Notices, Certificates and Warranties

Regulation of plumbing in Western Australia sits with Building and Energy inside the state government, and the Plumbers Licensing Board operates within that. The obligation that matters to a homeowner is that a licensed plumbing contractor lodges a notice of the work with the Board, and that notice is the evidence the job was carried out lawfully by somebody entitled to do it. Lodging it is the contractor obligation and it is included in the price of any properly quoted job. The point at which its absence becomes your problem is at sale or at an insurance claim, when a settlement agent or an insurer asks for the record and none exists. Asking for written confirmation that the notice will be lodged costs nothing while the quote is still being negotiated.

In the South West there is a second paperwork trail, because the water supplier may not be the sewerage authority. A connection or meter application in Bunbury goes to Aqwest and in Busselton to Busselton Water, while the sewer application for the same property goes to Water Corporation. Two applications, two fee schedules and two sets of timing, all of it better established before a job is booked against a settlement date.

Statutory warranty covers the plumbing workmanship for a set period from completion, and the manufacturer warranty on a unit or an appliance is separate again and commonly conditional on the servicing having been done. Over the top of both sit the consumer guarantees administered by the ACCC, and no clause in a quote removes them. Technical standards come through the Plumbing Code of Australia and the Australian Standards it references, with the state licensing provisions available from WA legislation. A dispute that cannot be settled directly goes to conciliation first and from there to the State Administrative Tribunal, which publishes how an application is made. A dispute about finance or insurance instead of workmanship can reach external resolution through the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. Every one of those processes turns on the written quote, the written scope and the notice, so the argument for keeping all three makes itself.

WA Licence Classes and Checking One

Western Australia separates plumbing authorisation in a way that surprises people arriving from the eastern states. A plumbing contractor licence allows the holder to contract for the work and carry responsibility for it. A plumbing tradesperson licence allows the holder to perform it. Whoever arrives in the van may hold the second while working under somebody holding the first, which is proper and normal, and the contractor is the name that should appear on your quote.

Gas sits under a separate authorisation again, so a plumber is not automatically a gasfitter. In a region running largely on bottled gas that distinction comes up constantly, because a hot water changeover, a cooktop connection or a cylinder bank installation all need the gas authorisation as well as the plumbing one. On a job involving both, two sets of paperwork are produced.

Checking takes about a minute, since the state government maintains the public register reached through the WA Government services. Search on the licensed entity named in the written quote and ignore whatever is painted on the vehicle, since the two differ more than people expect. A trading name with no licensed entity standing behind it is the clearest warning this trade offers. Three further authorisations come up locally. Mixing valve work needs an endorsement, backflow prevention testing needs an accreditation, and removing asbestos cement pipe needs its own removal licence from WorkSafe WA. That last one matters on any South West property built before the mid 1980s, and the older townsites through Collie, Harvey and Bridgetown have plenty of asbestos cement in the ground.

What to Look Out For When Hiring a South West Plumber

Most plumbing complaints in this region trace to a quote built on Perth assumptions landing on South West ground, and the signal is in what a tradesperson neglects to ask about, long before it reaches the figure on the page. The first is an excavation price with no stated ground assumption. Trenching here runs anywhere from $90 a metre in coastal sand to $820 a metre through granite, so a single rate with nothing said about what the ground is made of is not a price, it is an opening position. The honest version names the assumed ground, prices rock separately as a rate per metre, and offers trial holes if the route is unknown.

The second is a soakwell proposed in clay country. That detail belongs in Perth sand and it does not function here, so a quote offering one without any mention of the soil percolation rate has been copied from a metropolitan job. Ask what the percolation rate is and what happens to the water once the chamber is full, since the answers decide whether you need a dispersal trench instead. The third is relining dismissed or accepted without the camera footage. Because digging is expensive here and relining is not, the method choice swings the price substantially in either direction, and both figures should be in front of you. A contractor who recommends either one without inspecting the line has guessed, and on this ground a guess is an expensive thing to be wrong about.

Beyond those three, all the usual tests apply here too. An exclusions list that is missing entirely, since exclusions are where variations come from. Somebody quoting gas work without producing the gas authorisation. A connection application being prepared for Water Corporation on a Bunbury or Busselton property. An onsite wastewater system sold on the ridge without any mention of the local government approval conditions. Nobody prepared to confirm in writing that the notice of work gets lodged.

Getting Comparable Quotes

Comparing two South West plumbing quotes only works where both describe the same property, and the properties vary here far more than the work does. A beach house at Dunsborough, a brick and tile house on Bunbury clay and forty hectares outside Manjimup are three unrelated plumbing problems sharing a region. Start from the symptom and hold your own diagnosis back. Cover what is happening, where, since when, and what makes it worse, with attention to whether it is seasonal, because a fault appearing each winter points at stormwater and ground movement where one appearing each February points at the clay drying out. A plumber told the floor cracked and the door started sticking in March has been handed a real clue. Someone handed the words fix a leak has been given an instruction, and most contractors price an instruction exactly as issued.

Give each quoting plumber the same five facts. The town, because that settles who supplies the water. What the ground is made of, from the spoil of any previous dig, since sand, clay and rock are three different prices. Whether the gas supply is reticulated or bottled. Whether wastewater goes to sewer or to a system the property owns. And the build decade, which predicts the pipe material and whether asbestos cement is likely.

Have each quote laid out so its assumptions are visible, with labour separated from materials, the ground condition named explicitly, a rate per metre stated for rock beyond the assumption, an hourly rate given for anything outside the quoted scope, every exclusion written out, and reinstatement of lawn or paving either costed or ruled out in plain words. For drainage work, put the camera inspection and its written report on a line of their own, since that item is what demonstrates the rest of the quote rests on evidence. Treat the lowest figure carefully on anything that goes below ground. The cheapest South West quote is commonly the one that assumed clay where granite sits, or assumed sand because the person quoting works mostly in Perth, and it converges on the others as soon as the first metre is open. Accept the quote whose assumptions are written down, because it is the only one a contractor can be held to afterwards. Collect three in writing, work through the exclusions before you look at any total, and put to the two cheaper contractors whatever the dearest one allowed for that they did not.