Drainage and plumbing, South Granville
Drainage and Plumbing in South Granville Vancouver
South Granville is the name people use for the Granville blocks between Kerrisdale and Oakridge, roughly W 41st down to W 64th, Oak Street across to Angus Drive and Cypress. Adera, Marguerite, Churchill, Wiltshire, Angus, Hudson, Selkirk.
It is also the worst combined sewer holdout we work in. Four out of five sewer main segments under these streets still carry sewage and rainwater in the same pipe. That changes what a wet basement here actually means, so we camera the line before anybody quotes a number.
One pipe for the toilet and the roof
Count the City’s own sewer main records inside the box from W 41st to W 64th, Oak Street to Cypress: 204 segments, and 164 of them are combined. That is 80.4%. Citywide the figure is 24.3%. Only 9 sanitary segments and 31 storm segments exist in the whole box.
Nothing else on our map comes close. Kerrisdale runs 63.2% combined, Shaughnessy 46.9%, Oakridge 39.0%, Marpole 37.3%, Dunbar 30.7%, Kitsilano 19.6%. Three blocks east of here the odds are less than half as bad.
Here is what that means with a shovel in your hand. On a combined system your perimeter drain and your roof leaders feed the same pipe as your toilet. Put a November downpour into that pipe and the water has one place left to go, which is back up the lateral. The City says it plainly: in heavy rain, high volumes of rainwater can exceed the capacity of a combined sewer system.
Most of that pipe is old material too. Of the 164 combined segments, 115 are vitrified clay, 21 concrete and 6 PVC. The City’s own life expectancy figure for a buried sewer main is approximately 100 years.
One more thing that surprises people. South Granville has no park of its own. The City has 22 local areas and South Granville is not one of them, and no City park sits inside the box. Montgomery Park is filed under Oakridge, Shannon Park under Marpole, Shannon Mews under Kerrisdale. There is no absorbing green space in here. Everything that falls on these blocks goes to a boulevard, a lawn or a catch basin, and from the catch basin straight into a combined pipe.
Two houses, and almost nothing in between
Off the City’s 2026 tax roll there are 805 detached lots on Adera, Marguerite, Churchill, Wiltshire, Cartier, Hudson, Selkirk, Angus, Montgomery, Osler and Athlone between the 4100 and 6499 blocks. The build years are not a gentle curve. They are two humps.
31.3% of them went up in the 1920s. 252 houses in one decade. 42.0% predate 1950. Then the neighbourhood all but stops building: 5 houses in the 1950s, 13 in the 1960s, 2 in the 1970s. Twenty houses in thirty years. The rebuild wave starts in the 1980s and has not let up, 81 in the 1980s, 157 in the 1990s, 119 in the 2010s.
So on any block here you are standing in front of one of two houses. Either an original from the 1920s with whatever the builder of that era put in the ground, or a rebuild from 1985 onward on modern plastic. There is very little middle. That changes what a camera expects to find before it goes down the pipe.
Worth knowing about the old ones: the median recorded major improvement year on the 343 pre-1960 detached lots is 1975. Most of the old houses have been renovated at least once. A renovation touches fixtures. It very rarely touches the buried lateral.
The City’s pipe is the same story. Under these streets there are 473 water main segments, and 151 are still cast iron. 128 of them went in during the 1940s and 1950s.
24/7 emergency dispatch
Wet basement on the South Granville blocks?
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 the footage is yours.
South Granville drainage and plumbing FAQ
It is not one of the City’s 22 official local areas, which is why people draw it differently. The residential South Granville, the one this page is about, is the Granville blocks between Kerrisdale and Oakridge, roughly W 41st down to W 64th, Oak Street across to Angus Drive and Cypress. If you are north of W 41st you are in Shaughnessy, and if you are west of Cypress you are heading into Kerrisdale.
Almost certainly yes. 164 of the 204 sewer main segments in these blocks are combined, 80.4%, against 24.3% for Vancouver as a whole. There are only 9 sanitary segments and 31 storm segments in the entire box.
Because your perimeter drain and your roof leaders go into the same pipe as your toilet. The City’s own line is that in heavy rain, high volumes of rainwater can exceed the capacity of a combined system. When that happens the water backs up the lowest connection it can find, which is often yours.
Old material. 115 of the 164 combined mains under these streets are vitrified clay, and the connection from a house of that era was laid to the same standard. Clay cracks at the joint and roots find the crack. The camera tells you whether yours is blocked, bellied or broken, which are three different jobs at three different numbers.
Usually better off, but do not assume it. The rebuild wave here started in the 1980s and the median major improvement year on the pre-1960 houses is 1975, so plenty of properties got new fixtures and kept the old buried lateral. What the house looks like above ground tells you nothing about what is under the front lawn.
The City lists tree roots among the most common causes of sewer backups, alongside misaligned joints and a broken lateral. What we can tell you about these blocks is the counts: 2,135 City trees, 207 American elms, 361 Norway maples, and 41 elm trunks measuring 80 cm or more. Marguerite, Churchill and Wiltshire carry the heaviest loads.
Often, yes. Relining and pipe bursting both avoid an open cut. The City’s own guidance describes renewal as relining pipes to extend their life span, or replacing them entirely with pipe resistant to tree roots. Site conditions decide which one your property can take, and we tell you that before any work starts.
Yes, and it is the cheapest money in the deal. On a block where a third of the houses are from the 1920s and the rest are rebuilds, a scope is the only thing that tells you which one you are buying. Anyone quoting perimeter drainage off a walk around the driveway is guessing.
No travel surcharge. We are on the west side constantly and the pricing is the same as anywhere else in Vancouver.
All of Vancouver, plus Burnaby, New Westminster and the North Shore. The neighbourhoods either side of these blocks are Kerrisdale, Oakridge, Shaughnessy, Marpole and Cambie, and we work all of them.
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.