Drainage and plumbing, Brentwood Burnaby
Drainage and Plumbing in Brentwood, Burnaby
Brentwood Park is a hill, not a hollow. The lawn drives sit on a plateau around 76 m, and the ground falls away to about 55 m at Willingdon, 54 m at Springer and 56 m down at Lougheed.
That one fact changes the diagnosis. Water does not rise up at most Brentwood houses. It runs down at them, off the plateau and onto the lots at the toe of the slope. We camera the line before anybody quotes a number.
The house is older than the sewer it connects to
Brentwood Park went in as a subdivision in the early 1950s, 572 homes with a shopping centre planned. The City’s sanitary mains under those same lawn drives are recorded as 1965 to 1979. Those two dates do not line up, and the 199 surviving ditches sit in the gap between them.
We are not going to tell you why. What we will say, as the people who open these lots, is that the private side out here is often older, shallower and more patched than the public main it meets at the property line. That is where the camera earns its keep.
The other split is Poly-B. Grey supply pipe stamped PB2110 or CSA-B 137.8 went into Canadian homes from about 1978 to the mid 1990s. The single family stock here is early 1950s, so it is the wrong era. Poly-B in Brentwood belongs to the low rise and high rise rental buildings in the southeast corner near Springer Avenue and to later infill, not to the bungalows on the lawn drives. Plenty of pages get that backwards.
What the City's own map says is under Brentwood Park
Brentwood Park runs between Willingdon Avenue on the west and Springer Avenue on the east, with Hastings Street at the north and Lougheed Highway marking the line between the houses and the industrial flats. Inside that horseshoe of curving lawn drives, the City of Burnaby’s published GIS records 153 sanitary main segments, 383 storm main segments, 281 catch basins and 547 storm service lines.
Two of those numbers are zero. Zero combined sewer mains, zero combined service lines. Burnaby says only 7% of its sewers still need separating and names Burnaby Heights and Glenbrook as the two neighbourhoods. Brentwood is not one of them, which is why a wet Brentwood basement points at the private side of the property line and not at a City main mixing rain with sewage.
The materials are on the record too. Of the 153 sanitary mains, 53 are asbestos cement, 44 concrete, 34 vitrified clay and 21 PVC. Install dates run 1965 to 2021, with about 90% of the segments laid between 1965 and 1979. The storm side is mostly concrete, 230 of 383, with the earliest recorded install in 1958.
Then there is the odd one. 199 open roadside ditch segments are still mapped inside the neighbourhood, 170 of them up in the residential streets rather than along the Lougheed edge. A 1950s hill subdivision was cheaper to drain with open ditch than with pipe, and a lot of it never got upgraded. If your driveway culvert silts up, the driveway floods. That is a Brentwood job and it barely exists anywhere else we work.
What Burnaby and Vancouver customers say
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Seven things worth knowing if you own in Brentwood
- Find out where you sit on the dome. The interior lawn streets sit around 76 m and the ground falls to roughly 55 m at Willingdon, 54 m at Springer and 56 m at Lougheed. If you are on an edge lot you are catching runoff from everything above you, and that belongs in the plan before anyone picks a pump.
- The plateau is flat, and flat is its own problem. Flat ground plus flat pipe means slow perimeter drains and standing water in a yard. It does not mean a high water table. The fix is grade and flushing, not a bigger pump.
- Braelawn and Lorilawn sit on the lip of a ravine. Beecher Creek runs from Beecher Park south under Lougheed Highway into Still Creek, and the City maps four Beecher tributaries around the east side of the neighbourhood. Homes on that lip get side hill seepage that homes up on Delta and Gamma never see.
- Clean the perimeter drains. This is Burnaby’s own advice, not ours. The City says to clean them often because they get blocked by leaves, pine needles, silt, dirt or roots.
- Watch the catch basin outside your place. The City asks residents to check that the curb gutter and catch basin next to the property are clear of leaves and garbage. There are 281 of them inside the horseshoe, and they are the reason a street ponds or does not.
- Downpipes onto splash pads. Burnaby wants roof water on a splash pad so it soaks into the lawn and garden rather than being dumped at the foundation. On a flat plateau lot that one change does real work.
- Asbestos cement is in the ground here. 53 of the 153 sanitary mains inside Brentwood Park are asbestos cement, plus 8 storm segments. It is a City recorded material in this exact neighbourhood, and it changes how a repair beside it gets handled.
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Drainage problem in Brentwood?
Ryan picks up. Live dispatch, and you get a real arrival window on the call. We camera the line before anybody quotes a number, and there is no travel fee anywhere in Burnaby.
Brentwood drainage and plumbing FAQ
Usually not. Brentwood Park is a dome. The lawn drives sit on a plateau around 76 m and the ground falls away on three sides to about 54 to 56 m. Water comes down at these houses rather than up. The wet basements are mostly on the south and west edge lots at the toe of the slope, and the cause is normally surface water and a failed or silted perimeter drain.
Not if you live north of Lougheed Highway. The Still Creek flats sit roughly 20 m below the neighbourhood, and Lougheed is the line between the residential area and the industrial land. Still Creek flooding is real and it is documented, but it is a Town Centre and industrial issue, not a lawn drive one.
No. The City’s published GIS returns zero combined sewer mains and zero combined service lines inside Brentwood Park. Burnaby says only 7% of its sewers still need separation, in Burnaby Heights and Glenbrook. Neither is here.
Because 199 ditch segments were never piped, and 170 of them are up in the residential streets rather than along the highway. Open ditch was the cheap way to drain a hill subdivision in the 1950s. If the culvert under your driveway silts up, the driveway ponds and the water goes toward the house.
We will not guess. The City records the public mains as asbestos cement, concrete, vitrified clay and PVC, laid mostly between 1965 and 1979. Nobody recorded the private side. The houses predate those mains, so the lateral in your yard is often older and more patched than the pipe it meets. We put a camera in it and you see what is actually there.
Probably not in the original 1950s stock, because Poly-B went into Canadian homes from about 1978 to the mid 1990s. Check the rental low rises and high rises in the southeast corner near Springer Avenue and any later infill instead. It is usually grey and stamped PB2110 or CSA-B 137.8.
No. A pump that never shuts off is fighting more water than it should be seeing, and on a Brentwood edge lot that usually means the perimeter drain has silted or collapsed and the water is arriving faster than it leaves. We check the pump and the drain together, because replacing only the pump leaves the actual problem in the ground.
Often, yes. Relining and pipe bursting go in through small access pits instead of an open cut down the length of the yard. We scope the line first and tell you whether the site allows it before anything is planned.
The City, for anything in the road. Burnaby takes flooding and safety hazard reports on 604-294-7200, and it asks residents to keep the curb gutter and catch basin next to their property clear. Anything on your side of the property line is ours.
Yes, and it is a different service list. Towers and strata mean main line cleaning, hydro jetting, parkade catch basins, grease traps, sewage ejector pumps and backwater valves rather than drain tile in a front lawn.
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Water where it should not be?
Ryan picks up. Live dispatch, and you get a real arrival window on the call.