Vancouver’s heaviest atmospheric rivers land between late October and early February. By the time you hear water running into the basement on a Saturday night in November, the drainage has been compromised for months. Nothing looked wrong in July, so nobody looked.

Scheduled maintenance catches the slow failures while they are still cheap. Scope the drain tile in September, find the root infiltration before the rain arrives, jet the line clean, and the system works straight through the storm season. No emergency call, no flooded basement, no insurance claim.

We run maintenance for three kinds of customer, and they need different things. Residential homeowners go on an annual or semi annual schedule: camera scope, drain tile jet flush, sump pump test, catch basin clean. Commercial property owners go quarterly: kitchen stack jets, parkade drains, storm lateral work, and certificates of service for insurance compliance. Strata buildings go semi annual or quarterly on the common area horizontal stacks, parkade trench drains and downspout systems, with certificates emailed for the strata records.

What a contract buys you over calling us when something breaks is fairly simple. Lower cost per visit. Emergency priority when something does go wrong between visits. Predictable budgeting, one quote and one invoice instead of a surprise. Insurance documentation, certificates of service and photo logs. And the plain fact that somebody is watching the system.

A visit itself is four things. The camera goes into the perimeter drain through the corner cleanout, so we look at the real pipe condition rather than guessing. Silt, root infiltration and a crushed section all read differently on the monitor, and you watch the same feed we do. If the footage shows buildup, the hydrojetter goes in and takes it back to bare pipe. If the line is clean we do not jet it. Then five gallons of water goes into the sump pit: the float should trip, the pump should run, and the water should exit cleanly past the foundation rather than circling back into the weeping tile. A pump that drags on that test gets flagged before the storm rather than during it.

Then you get the paperwork. A written report with timestamped photos, and a certificate of service for your insurer, your strata or the property file. If we found something developing, the quote for the fix is separate and you are under no obligation to take it. Most maintenance visits find nothing that needs doing, and confirming that in writing is the point of the visit.

The Vancouver calendar drives the schedule. September is the pre rain visit: drain tile scope and jet flush, sump pump test, perimeter grade check. March is the post winter assessment, hose bib check and garden season prep. Quarterly work is restaurant kitchen stacks, parkade storm laterals and strata common area stacks. Annual work is the residential lateral camera scope and the full system audit.