Plumbing, heating and gas fitting in West Vancouver

The housing stock here has its own habits

West Vancouver homes tend to be older, larger and more individually built than the tract housing further east, and that shapes the work. A house from the fifties or sixties that's been renovated three times often contains three generations of plumbing, and the joins between them are where problems start.

Galvanized steel supply piping is still in service in some of the older houses here. It corrodes from the inside, narrowing until pressure drops noticeably and the hot water runs discoloured. Once it reaches that stage, patching one section tends to push the problem to the next. We'll tell you honestly when a repair is a stopgap and roughly how long you'd expect it to hold.

Copper is the more common find, and generally fine — though pinhole leaks in older copper are worth taking seriously as a sign of what the rest of the run may be doing.

Hydronic heating is common here

A larger share of West Vancouver homes run on boilers and radiant heat than in most of the Lower Mainland — cast iron radiators in the older houses, in-floor radiant in the newer and renovated ones. Many were also converted from oil to gas at some point, and those conversions vary enormously in quality depending on when and by whom they were done.

We're licensed for boiler and pressure vessel work as well as gas, which matters on these systems. A boiler job here regularly turns out to involve the gas supply, the venting and the hydronic side all at once, and having one contractor able to sign off on all of it avoids the standoffs that happen when trades have to coordinate.

Elevation, pressure and long runs

Homes up the hill — the British Properties, Chartwell, Westhill, Cypress Park — sit at elevations where incoming water pressure behaves differently than it does down at the shore. Pressure-reducing valves, and the boosting arrangements some homes have, need to be set correctly and do drift over time. Symptoms tend to show up as inconsistent pressure between floors rather than as an obvious fault.

Larger properties also mean longer runs between the mechanical room and the fixtures, which is why so many homes here have long waits for hot water at distant bathrooms. A recirculation line solves it properly. On a renovation it's straightforward to add; retrofitting into a finished house takes more thought, and we'll be straight with you about what it involves.

Where we work in West Vancouver

Ambleside, Dundarave, the British Properties, Chartwell, Westhill, Sentinel Hill, Cypress Park, Caulfeild, Eagle Harbour, Whytecliff and Horseshoe Bay. We're on the North Shore every day and cross into West Vancouver constantly, so getting to you is rarely the constraint.

For the further-out addresses — Caulfeild westward — it helps if you can be flexible on timing, since we'll usually pair your visit with another job out that way. It's not a surcharge, just how the day gets planned.

What we can help with

• Plumbing — leaks, burst pipes, fixture and faucet installation, drain clearing, copper and PEX repiping, bathroom and kitchen rough-in.
• Heating — boilers and radiant systems, furnaces, thermostats and zoning.
• Heat pumps — ducted and ductless installation with proper load calculations.
• Gas — lines, appliance connections, fireplaces and leak testing, permits included.
• Hot water — tank replacement and tankless installation.