The odds are higher here than anywhere else in Vancouver. 1,033 of the 1,792 City main segments under Sunset are combined, 57.6%, against a city average of 24.3%. In kilometres it is 67.4, the most of any local area. We can tell you what is under your block before we come out.

Because your connection follows the street. The City is working toward the Province’s goal of replacing all combined systems with separated systems by 2050, and its own wording is that as combined sewers get replaced, properties will also need to have separated sewer systems. Getting roof and foundation drains off the sanitary line is usually the practical piece.

You are responsible for maintaining the lines on your property up to where they meet the City’s connection. The City’s own guidance is to call a private plumbing contractor to scope the work, and the contractor pulls the permits and books the inspection.

Not entirely, and this is the quirk of Sunset. The median build year here is 1978 against a city median of 1968, so the houses really are newer. The sewer under the road is not. A newer house on a combined clay street still has an older problem outside the foundation than inside it.

It is, and it is a slope story rather than a soil story. E 41st to E 47th sits around 95 to 98 metres. Between E 59th and E 67th the ground drops about 55 metres in eight blocks, and below E 65th you are under 15 metres above sea level. A lower lot catches what everything above it sheds.

There is, and the warning comes from the Province rather than from us. Its advisory covers the ground sloping south toward the Fraser in the southern area of Vancouver and names Sunset among the artesian areas. Its instruction to contractors working here is to assume flowing artesian conditions. It is a reason to take excavation on this slope seriously, not a reason to expect water in your basement.

Metro Vancouver says it, not just us. Its wording is that roots can pry open the joints between pipes, and the City lists tree roots among the common causes of a sewer backup. Sunset has 9,959 City street trees, 2,203 maples and 2,015 cherries and plums, and 1,056 of them have a trunk over 60 cm. That is a lot of root over a lot of clay.

1,790 Sunset parcels, 26.1%, were built inside the Poly-B window of roughly 1978 to the late 1990s, slightly above the city rate. It is usually grey and stamped PB2110. The important part: Poly-B is a water supply pipe, not a drain pipe, so it has nothing to do with your perimeter drainage.

A number that does not move. You watch the monitor with us, you see the crack or the root or the belly, and the quote comes off what is in the pipe rather than off a guess. The file is yours to keep and it is worth keeping for the next owner.

All of Vancouver, plus Burnaby, New Westminster and the North Shore. South Vancouver, Kensington-Cedar Cottage, Oakridge, Marpole, Riley Park and Victoria Drive are the closest to this one and we are in them constantly.