Plumber on Main Street, Fraser and Kensington-Cedar Cottage

Why suite density matters more than housing age

The housing is largely pre-1960 — which means the usual east-side picture of galvanized supply and clay sewer laterals. But that's true across a lot of Vancouver.

What's specific here is that a very high proportion of these houses have been converted to hold two or three households where they were built for one. Practically, that means:

Drainage sized for one kitchen and one bathroom is serving two or three. Original stack and lateral capacity was never designed for it, and the symptom is a main line that copes for years and then stops coping.

Venting was often improvised during conversion. A second bathroom added in a basement in 1994 may be vented in a way nobody would design today. Gurgling fixtures and slow drains that don't respond to cabling frequently trace back to venting rather than blockage.

Water ingress is a habitability problem, not a maintenance one. A damp basement in a storage room can wait for spring. A damp tenanted suite has to be solved this week. Perimeter drainage work here is very often driven by a tenant rather than by an owner noticing.

Landlord and property-manager work is a large share of what we do here — turnovers, urgent repairs between tenancies, and the kind of documented reporting an owner needs when a tenant raises something.

The standard east-side problems, still true

Roots in clay laterals. Mature street trees over pre-1960 clay pipe. A main line that has blocked twice has a structural cause and cabling it again is treating the symptom.

Galvanized supply, in whatever hasn't been replaced. Declining pressure, discoloured morning water.

Cast iron waste stacks in the older houses, scaling internally.