Drainage and plumbing, Kensington-Cedar Cottage
Drainage and Plumbing in Kensington-Cedar Cottage
This neighbourhood is built over the biggest buried creek in East Vancouver, and the sewer still follows the old creek bed rather than the street grid. It also logs more sewer backup calls to the City than any other Vancouver neighbourhood.
Old pipe, big trees, a 64 metre fall from Knight and 41st down to Broadway. We camera the line before anybody quotes a number, and the footage is yours.
The north end and the south end are different houses
The old copy on this page said the streets off Knight, Victoria and Nanaimo are mostly Vancouver Specials from the 1960s and 70s. We joined the City address file to the property tax roll and checked. Across 9,427 parcels with a build year, 1960 to 1979 accounts for 15.9% of the neighbourhood. Not one of those streets is close to mostly. Victoria Drive is 18%, Knight Street 8%. So we cut it.
What the data does show is a hard split from north to south. North of East 24th, roughly half the houses predate 1930. East 10th Avenue is 52% pre-1930, East 24th is 55%, East 22nd is 49%. South of East 34th the picture flips: East 39th is 38% built between 1978 and 1995, East 40th is 37%, East 35th is 31%. BC Assessment records more houses here as built in 1910 than in any other single year, which is the pre-war Cedar Cottage streetcar boom showing up in the roll.
That split decides the call. On the pre-1930 half you are usually looking at the drain: old lateral, old perimeter tile, joints that roots have found. On the south end you are more often looking at supply, because 1978 to 1995 is the polybutylene window and chlorine and chloramine in municipal water degrade poly-B from the inside, worst at fittings, sharp bends and kinks.
One more number that explains a lot of our calls. 2,834 parcels, about 30% of the neighbourhood, carry a major improvement recorded at least 20 years after the build year. New bathroom, new kitchen, original lateral underneath. That is the classic Kensington-Cedar Cottage job.
Signs worth acting on here
Nothing on this list gets better on its own.
- Water standing in the street outside your place. The City logged 636 street surface water flooding calls in this neighbourhood between 2022 and 2026, more than any other Vancouver neighbourhood. The worst blocks are the 2700 block of Woodland Drive, the 1700 block of Kingsway and the 1500 block of East 12th.
- Sewage backing up into a basement fixture. 448 sewer backup calls in the same window, again first in the city. Those records are address suppressed, so the number is a neighbourhood figure, but it tells you what the pipe under here is doing.
- Slow drains through the whole house. The main, not the fixture. Roots, grease, a misaligned joint or a broken lateral, and a camera separates them in minutes.
- Discoloured water or weak pressure. 3,024 of the 5,917 water main segments under these streets are cast iron, about half.
- A suite floor drain that backs up on a cycle. Half the homes here are counted as duplexes in the census and 56% of households rent, so a drain that fails takes a tenant down with it.
- A catch basin at your corner that holds water. The 1400 block of East 18th is the only block in the neighbourhood that ranks near the top of both the flooding list and the catch basin list. That is Gibby’s Field, on the old creek bed.
Gibson Creek is still down there
Kensington-Cedar Cottage runs from Fraser Street east to Nanaimo Street, with 41st Avenue on the south and Broadway and 16th Avenue on the north. Kingsway cuts through it on the diagonal because Kingsway was the 1860 military trail to New Westminster, paved and renamed in 1913, a colonial road laid down before the survey grid it now crosses.
Under the middle of it ran Gibson Creek, the longest creek in the China Creek system at around 16 km, and the China Creek system was the second largest in the Lower Mainland after Still Creek. Gibson Creek started in bogs around 41st to 45th, ran north through Kensington Park and down beside Knight Street to 28th Avenue, and became China Creek where the Trout Lake overflow joined it at East 12th. In places it ran in a ravine 30 to 40 feet deep.
Sewers went in here between 1911 and 1917. In 1914 and 1915 the Joint Sewerage and Drainage Board extended the China Creek line south of 11th Avenue, including portions of Gibson Creek, with a 42 inch sewer in it. That line follows the creek, not the street. You can walk the route today by the orange covers set in the middle of roads and lanes, lettered GVS and DD for the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District. Outside 3576 Dumfries Street you can still hear water running in it, and the booklet that documents the route says the clear water in there is Davey Creek.
The ravine is still measurable. Across East 18th Avenue the ground reads 55 metres west of Knight, drops to 38 metres at Gibby’s Field between 1454 and 1462 East 18th, and climbs back to 54 metres a block further east. Gibby’s Field holds the last known piece of original creek bed from the China Creek system, and it was considered unbuildable because of local drainage patterns until a geotechnical study around 2000.
What Vancouver customers say
Ryan was great! My landlord called him to fix my blocked kitchen sink. He showed up the same day (on a Sunday) and fixed the problem. He even cleaned the sink and dried up all the water that had leaked before he got there. And he was very careful coming in and out of the house so my cat wouldn’t get out. I’d definitely recommend him.
Ryan is INCREDIBLE. He has been responding to all of us (four houses and families!) affected by a sewage back up. This is all on Boxing Day and beyond, in terrible weather full of ice, cold and rain. He is so knowledgeable, and knew what was needed right away. Just the top of his field I am sure. As well as that, he is incredibly calm, respectful, kind and fair. I am truly amazed by this person's capacity and competence in combination with his noble, calm presence in the face of a real mess. Thank you Ryan, so very much!
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Had an excellent experience. Ryan was fantastic, it was an after hours call late in the evening and he showed up exactly in the time frame he gave. Took care of the kitchen sink issue within minutes all systems were running like new. Pricing was extremely reasonable, Ryan was patient and explained everything to me while fixing my problem. I would highly recommend this company for any plumbing work.
Ryan was efficient, experienced, and knowledgeable. He was able to squeeze me into his schedule with short notice and wasted no time with my appointment. He arrived on site inspected the issue, and was quickly at work with resolving the problem. I am very pleased with his service and honesty. He provided recommendations that will help assist me in future occurrences.
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Backed up in Kensington-Cedar Cottage?
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Kensington-Cedar Cottage drainage and plumbing FAQ
Along the full mapped creek corridor the flooding call density is only about 1.4 times the rest of the neighbourhood, so we will not tell you the whole corridor floods. What is measurable is the low corner. The 2700 block of Woodland Drive and the 1500 block of East 12th sit at 31 and 32 metres, the lowest ground in the neighbourhood, they are where the booklet puts the Gibson Creek and Canoe Creek confluence, and they tie for the most street flooding calls in Kensington-Cedar Cottage.
Sewers were built through this area between 1911 and 1917, and the China Creek line extension south of 11th Avenue went in during 1914 and 1915 with a 42 inch sewer. 1,114 of the 3,695 main segments are still combined and 769 of those are vitrified clay. What is on your own property is not in any dataset. That is what the camera is for.
Worth checking. 2,070 parcels here, about 22%, were built between 1978 and 1995, and that share runs to 37 and 38% on East 39th and East 40th. Poly-B is grey or silver flexible plastic. Chlorine and chloramine in municipal water degrade it from the inside and it fails first at fittings, sharp bends and kinks. Go and look at the pipe rather than guessing from the build year.
The City logged 448 sewer backup calls here between 2022 and 2026, more than any other Vancouver neighbourhood, and the same first place shows up in the 2009 to 2021 records with 1,443 calls. Part of that lead is size, because this is one of the largest local areas at 7.24 square kilometres and about 49,000 people. The rest is old pipe and a lot of it.
You are responsible for maintaining the sewer lines on your property, up to where they meet the City’s sewer connection. Past that point it is the City’s. A camera run from your cleanout shows the whole thing and tells you which side the fault is on before anybody spends money.
Roots crack pipe. That is the City’s own position, it lists holes and cracks caused by damage, age or tree roots as a way water gets into a sewer, and it suggests replacing with pipe that resists roots. We will not tell you a specific tree caused your blockage. We will put a camera in and show you the mass and the joint it came through. For context, there are 13,026 City street trees in this neighbourhood and 1,955 of them are 60 cm or more through the trunk.
No. Vancouver’s designated floodplain dataset returns nothing inside this neighbourhood, and the City’s artesian conditions list does not include it either. What you are dealing with here is rainfall, grade and old pipe, not river or sea water.
Because the renovation almost certainly stopped at the foundation wall. About 30% of parcels here carry a major improvement recorded at least 20 years after the build year. New fixtures upstairs, original lateral underneath, and the lateral is the part that fails.
Not on a schedule you can plan around. The Province’s goal is to eliminate sewage overflows by 2050 and the City separates private connections as properties redevelop or carry out major renovations. Its 2023 to 2026 capital plan separation money went to Memorial West, Shaughnessy and a stretch of East 35th between Main and Quebec. None of it here.
All of Vancouver, plus Burnaby and New Westminster. Renfrew-Collingwood sits east of this neighbourhood, Grandview-Woodland north of it, Riley Park west, and we are in all of them constantly.
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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.