Drainage and plumbing, Kerrisdale
Drainage and Plumbing in Kerrisdale Vancouver
Kerrisdale is the combined sewer holdout of the west side. 655 of the 1,172 City sewer mains inside the neighbourhood still carry sewage and rainwater in the same pipe. Citywide that share is under a quarter.
On a hard November rain, the water off your roof and out of your perimeter drain is going into the same pipe as your toilet. We camera the line before anybody quotes a number, and the footage is yours.
Signs worth acting on in Kerrisdale
On a combined system the weather is a clue. Pay attention to whether the trouble tracks the rain.
- Backups that happen in a heavy storm and not in dry weather
- A wet basement every fall, or standing water against the foundation
- Slow drains through the whole house rather than at one fixture
- A toilet that gurgles when the sink or the laundry drains
- A sewer smell in the basement or the crawl space
- Water tracking sideways across the yard instead of soaking in
- A sump pump that runs and runs and never shuts off
One pipe, and it is mostly clay
Clip the City’s sewer main dataset to the official Kerrisdale boundary and you get 1,172 segments. 655 of them are combined, 261 sanitary, 256 storm. That is 55.9% combined against 24.3% for Vancouver as a whole, more than double the city average.
Material is the second half of the story. 500 of the 1,172 segments are vitrified clay, and 382 segments are combined and clay at the same time. Clay is jointed pipe. The City’s own list of how extra water gets into a sewer starts with holes and cracks caused by damage, age or tree roots, then leaky joints, then roof and foundation drains wrongly connected to the sanitary line.
The City has been separating the neighbours rather than Kerrisdale. Shaughnessy got 5.8 kilometres of combined pipe separated between West 26th and West 29th. Memorial West got 400 metres of new storm and sanitary under Highbury between West 31st and the lane south of West 33rd. Kerrisdale’s own 2025 construction memo to Council lists street renewal, sidewalks, asphalt, a watermain on Arbutus and the greenway crossing at West 41st. Sewer separation is not on that list.
None of that changes who owns what. You are responsible for the sewer lines on your property up to where they meet the City’s connection. A licensed plumber may clean and inspect the full run from the house out to the main. Only the City or its agents may excavate inside the road right of way. So when a Kerrisdale basement backs up in a storm, the first job is finding out which side of that line the fault is on.
Till underneath, big trees on top
Kerrisdale sits on the Vancouver upland and slopes down to the Fraser. The Geological Survey’s mapping of this upland says till up to 25 metres thick is the dominant surface and near surface material, that compact till is nearly impervious, and that for good drainage on till the surface has to slope. Water that reaches till does not keep going down. It runs sideways. If your perimeter drain is broken, sideways means your footing.
Above that there are 9,947 public trees inside the Kerrisdale boundary. 2,126 of them have a trunk 60 cm or wider and 387 are a metre or wider. Two thirds have no planting date on file at all, which means they predate the City’s planting records. Norway maple leads at 787, then western red cedar at 621, Kwanzan cherry at 517, Pissard plum at 458 and American elm at 261.
Some streets carry more of it than others. Marguerite Street has 88 American elms and 118 trees at 60 cm or wider. Churchill Street has 70 elms. Wiltshire Street has 126 Norway maples. Yew Street carries 195 trees over 60 cm, Angus Drive 129, Laburnum 82. Put jointed clay under a boulevard like that and the camera usually finds what you would expect.
The lots are part of it too. Kerrisdale runs 8.8 dwellings per hectare against 24.8 citywide, and 50.6% of the dwellings are single detached against 14.6% for the city. Fewer houses on more ground means longer private laterals from the house out to the main, and more joints along the way.
24/7 emergency dispatch
Drainage problem in Kerrisdale?
Ryan picks up. Live dispatch, and you get a real arrival window on the call. We camera the line before anybody quotes a number.
Kerrisdale drainage and plumbing FAQ
Probably. 655 of the 1,172 City sewer main segments inside Kerrisdale are still combined, 55.9%, against 24.3% for Vancouver as a whole. That is more than double the city average and it is the single biggest thing that makes drainage here behave differently from the neighbourhoods around it.
That is the combined system showing itself. In heavy rain the same pipe is carrying your roof water, your perimeter drain water and your sewage. The City’s design pushes the excess out to the receiving water to stop properties backing up. When the capacity runs out somewhere upstream of you, you find out.
Across Kerrisdale, 500 of the 1,172 main segments are vitrified clay, and 382 segments are combined and clay at once. Clay is jointed, and joints are where roots get in. What your own lateral is made of is a different question, and the camera is how we answer it rather than guessing from the build year.
Not on the current list. The City’s 2025 construction memo for Kerrisdale covers street renewal, sidewalks, asphalt, a watermain on Arbutus and the greenway crossing at West 41st. Shaughnessy and Memorial West both got separation work. Kerrisdale did not. The provincial goal is to end sewage overflows by 2050, and when the City does separate a street, the properties on it need separated systems too.
There are 9,947 public trees inside Kerrisdale and 2,126 of them have a trunk 60 cm or wider. 387 are over a metre. The City names tree roots as a cause of the cracks that let water into a sewer. Put that above jointed clay and roots are the reasonable first guess, but we still confirm it on camera before anybody quotes.
Kerrisdale sits on the Vancouver upland sloping down toward the Fraser. The Geological Survey describes this upland as till up to 25 metres thick, and says compact till is nearly impervious and needs a sloping surface to drain. So water tends to travel sideways rather than soak away, which is why a failed perimeter drain shows up at the foundation.
Usually. The City names three renewal methods, open trenching, pipe bursting and pipe relining. On a Kerrisdale lot with mature boulevard trees the trenchless two are normally the ones worth pricing first. The City used trenchless on its own Memorial West job specifically to preserve more than 20 mature trees.
We give you a firm price after the camera inspection and it does not change once digging starts. Kerrisdale runs 8.8 dwellings per hectare against 24.8 citywide and half the dwellings are single detached, so the length of the run varies a lot from lot to lot. That length is the number that moves the price, which is why we look first.
You are responsible for the sewer lines on your property, up to where they meet the City’s connection. Licensed plumbers are authorised to clean and inspect that whole run from the house to the main. Only the City or its agents may excavate or repair the City’s portion inside the road right of way.
All of Vancouver, plus Burnaby, New Westminster and the North Shore. The City’s official Kerrisdale area sits south of West 41st Avenue and runs down toward the Fraser. Residents usually think of it as West 33rd to West 57th between Blenheim and Granville, which puts Dunbar, South Granville, Oakridge and Marpole right alongside.
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.