Plumbing, heating and gas fitting in Vancouver

Vancouver has its own rulebook

This is the practical difference between working in Vancouver and working anywhere else in the region. Vancouver operates under its own charter and its own building by-law, separate from the BC Building Code that governs North Vancouver, Burnaby and the rest. Permits go through the City of Vancouver, and the requirements and processing don't always match what applies a few kilometres away.

It matters because a contractor who works exclusively outside the city sometimes gets caught out by it. We pull the permit, work to the by-law that applies, and meet the inspector.

The other Vancouver-specific one worth knowing: the city has been separating its combined sewers for years, and depending on your address and the scope of work, connecting or renovating can trigger a requirement to separate your storm and sanitary connections. That's a significant cost if it lands on you unexpectedly during a renovation, and it's worth establishing early rather than discovering mid-project.

Character homes

Vancouver's pre-war housing stock — Kitsilano, Mount Pleasant, Grandview, Dunbar, Kerrisdale — is wonderful and mechanically demanding. What we typically find is galvanized steel supply piping that has corroded internally to a fraction of its original bore, cast iron drains at the end of their service life, and heating systems that have been converted from coal to oil to gas across a century, each conversion leaving traces.

Character homes also tend to have been renovated repeatedly, which means several vintages of piping meeting at fittings that were never intended to be permanent. Diagnosing a leak in one of these houses means tracing what's actually installed rather than assuming.

Suites and laneway houses

Secondary suites and laneway houses are everywhere in Vancouver, and they add mechanical complexity that a single-family house doesn't have. Separate hot water, separate heating, sometimes separate gas metering, and always the question of how you serve two dwellings from infrastructure sized for one.

Undersized gas supply is the most common problem we find. A line that comfortably fed one furnace and one range often can't carry a second set of appliances, and the symptom isn't an obvious fault — it's appliances that quietly underperform. Sizing the supply properly is part of doing the job once.

Towers and stratas

Downtown, Yaletown, Olympic Village, Coal Harbour and the newer corridors along Cambie and Marine Drive are dense with strata buildings, and we work in them regularly — in-suite plumbing, appliance and fixture work, and on the commercial side the boiler plants, domestic hot water systems and controls that serve the whole building.

Tower work has its own logistics. Elevator bookings, loading bay access, restricted work hours and insurance certificates are normal requirements, and riser isolation needs coordination with the building. Let us know what your building requires when you call so nothing gets held up at the door.

Where we work

Across the city — the West End, Downtown, Yaletown, Kitsilano, Point Grey, Dunbar, Kerrisdale, Mount Pleasant, Main Street, Fairview, Grandview-Woodland, Hastings-Sunrise, East Vancouver, Marpole and South Vancouver. We're based in North Vancouver, so we're over one of the bridges rather than across the region, and Vancouver is part of our normal week.

What we can help with

• Plumbing — leaks, repiping, drains, fixtures, and suite and laneway rough-in.
• Heating — furnaces, boilers and radiators, and controls.
• Heat pumps — ducted and ductless, including in character homes with no ductwork.
• Gas — lines, appliance connections and fireplaces, permitted through the City of Vancouver.
• Commercial — boiler plants, domestic hot water and controls for stratas and light commercial.