Plumber in Gastown, Chinatown and Strathcona
These three neighbourhoods contain Vancouver's earliest surviving buildings — much of it late 1800s to 1930s — and the plumbing reflects that in ways newer parts of the city simply don't.
We reach the area in 60 minutes from our downtown base.
What's actually in these buildings
Cast iron waste stacks, often original. Cast iron corrodes and scales from the inside over decades until the bore narrows and the wall thins. In a building of this age the stack may be approaching a century old. Drainage that has slowed gradually rather than blocked suddenly is usually scale, and no amount of cabling fixes that.
Galvanized steel supply, where it hasn't been replaced. Rusting closed from the inside, producing pressure that declines over years and discoloured water in the morning.
Clay sewer laterals with mortared joints, under some of the oldest street trees in the city. Root intrusion here is a given rather than a possibility.
Converted commercial and warehouse buildings. Gastown in particular has a large number of former warehouses and commercial premises converted to residential lofts and offices, sometimes decades ago. Plumbing was routed into structures never designed for it — frequently exposed, frequently improvised, and rarely documented anywhere. Access is often better than in a purpose-built tower; predictability is much worse. We plan for that rather than assuming a standard layout.
Mixed-use everywhere. Restaurants, bars and retail at grade with residential above is the norm here, not the exception. That means shared and adjacent drainage, grease from commercial kitchens entering lines shared with residential waste, and diagnostics that have to consider the whole building rather than one unit.