Drainage and plumbing, Knight
Drainage and Plumbing in Knight, Vancouver
We work the blocks either side of Knight Street, from Kingcrest Park at E 26th down to E 41st, through Kensington-Cedar Cottage.
That neighbourhood logs more sewer backup calls to the City’s 3-1-1 line than any other in Vancouver. We camera the line before anybody quotes a number, and the footage is yours.
Signs worth putting a camera on
The City’s own list of the most common causes of a sewer backup runs personal products, paper towels, cat litter, baby wipes, tree roots, grease, misaligned joints, and a broken lateral or plugged main. This is what those look like from inside the house.
- A basement fixture that backs up when it rains hard and behaves the rest of the time
- Slow drains on more than one fixture at once
- The toilet gurgles when the washer or a sink drains
- A sewer smell in the basement or in a lower suite
- Water on the slab in the same corner every heavy rain
- A floor drain in a suite that comes up more than once in a season
- Standing water in the yard along the line of the perimeter drain
A ridge, a small lot, and four decades of pipe
Knight sits on the high ground. Along Knight Street the ground rises from 94 metres at E 41st to 103 metres at E 37th and E 36th, which is the crest, then falls away steadily to 66 metres at King Edward. Kensington Park sits right on that crest, bounded by E 33rd on the north, E 37th on the south, Knight on the west and Dumfries on the east.
That matters because it kills the usual excuse. A wet basement up here is not a water table problem. It is a pipe problem or a grading problem, and both are findable.
The housing is mixed rather than uniform. Across 863 dated lots on the six streets flanking Knight between roughly E 27th and E 41st, 44.5% were built before 1970, with the 1940s and 1950s at about 13% each. Then it keeps going. The single biggest decade is the 1990s at 14.9%, with the 2000s at 11.1%. Vancouver Specials belong to the 1965 to 1985 window and put the secondary suite on the bottom floor with the main living quarters above. Poly-B belongs to roughly 1978 to 1997, so it is the 1980s and 1990s stock here, not the 1970s.
The lots are small, and this is measured rather than asserted. The median parcel inside a 400 metre radius of Knight and E 35th is 337.8 square metres, about 3,600 square feet, with the middle half of parcels running between roughly 3,330 and 4,060 square feet. That is the standard east side lot. There is not much room between a house and the property line for an excavator and a spoil pile, which is the real reason trenchless gets priced first around here.
More sewer backup calls than any other Vancouver neighbourhood
The City publishes its 3-1-1 service requests. Between 2009 and 2021, Kensington-Cedar Cottage, the local area that contains the Knight corridor, filed 1,443 sewer backup cases. That is first in Vancouver, ahead of Hastings-Sunrise at 1,190 and Kitsilano at 1,116, and it is 11.9% of every sewer backup call in the city. The same area also leads on street surface water flooding with 1,897 cases.
Two honest caveats, because the number deserves them. Kensington-Cedar Cottage is one of the biggest local areas in Vancouver, so part of that lead is simply size, and these are counts of calls rather than confirmed failures. And the sewer backup records are address suppressed, so it is a neighbourhood figure and nobody can narrow it to a block.
What is under the road here explains a good part of it. Inside 600 metres of Knight Street and E 35th Avenue the City records 405 sewer main segments, and 122 of them, about three in ten, are still combined. One pipe for sewage and rain together. Of those 122 combined mains, 103 are vitrified clay, 84.4%. When heavy rain fills a combined pipe, the lowest opening in the system is a basement fixture.
Kensington-Cedar Cottage also carries 3,406 City catch basins, second only to Renfrew-Collingwood out of 44,963 across Vancouver, and 527 of them sit inside a 600 metre radius of Knight and E 35th.
24/7 emergency dispatch
Drainage problem on Knight?
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 you watch the monitor with us.
Knight drainage and plumbing FAQ
Because separation has not reached it. Inside a 600 metre radius of Knight and E 35th, 122 of the 405 City main segments are still combined, about three in ten, and 103 of those combined mains are vitrified clay. The dataset carries geometry and effluent type but no street names, so we can give you the area figure and then scope your own connection rather than guess at your block.
No. The City’s rule is that only a property owner can ask it to send a crew and a tenant cannot request service. They can call a plumber. If you own the house, you can call the City, and you can call us at the same time.
It will not. The City’s own wording is that where a toilet must be removed for access to service lines, City crews will not remove and re-install the toilet, and that the crew is responsible for clearing the blockage only. If you do not have a sump or a clean-out, that job lands on you or on us.
It may. Its published position is that the City may charge for the service call if it determines the problem is not caused by the City water and sewer system. On the Knight corridor, where the private lateral is often the fault, that is a real possibility rather than a theoretical one.
Not because of a water table. The crest along Knight is 103 metres at E 37th and E 36th, the highest point on the whole profile, dropping to 66 metres by King Edward. Up there a wet basement is a pipe or a grading problem, and both are things a camera and a look at the downspouts can settle.
Different eras, different materials, and we will not put a number on your particular line without looking. What is on record is the mix: 44.5% of the lots flanking Knight were built before 1970, the 1940s and 1950s are about 13% each, and the biggest single decade is the 1990s at 14.9%. Two neighbours can be forty years apart.
If your house went up in the 1980s or 1990s it is worth checking. Poly-B ran roughly 1978 to 1997, so the 1970s stock is mostly too early for it and the Vancouver Special era, 1965 to 1985, only overlaps at the tail. It is a grey supply pipe, not a drain pipe, so it is a separate job from anything below the slab.
Usually, and on these lots it is the first thing we price. The median parcel inside a 400 metre radius of Knight and E 35th is about 3,600 square feet, so there is not much ground between the house and the line for a machine and a spoil pile. The City names pipe bursting and pipe relining alongside open trenching, and the camera tells us which one your line can take.
They are one of the causes and it is the City’s own list, not ours. It names holes or cracks in pipes caused by damage, age or tree roots, and puts tree roots among the most common causes of a sewer backup. There are 2,158 City street trees inside a 600 metre radius of Knight and E 35th, 187 of them 60 cm or wider through the trunk.
All of Vancouver, plus Burnaby, New Westminster and the North Shore. Kensington-Cedar Cottage, Riley Park, Sunset, Victoria Drive, Mount Pleasant and South Vancouver are the closest to this corridor and we are in them constantly.
24/7 EMERGENCY DISPATCH
Water where it should not be?
Ryan picks up. Live dispatch, and you get a real arrival window on the call.