Perimeter Drain Cleaning Vancouver BC

Perimeter Drains

Also Called Drain Tile. Same Pipe, Same Job.

Every time it rains here — which is often, and for months at a stretch — groundwater moves toward the lowest point it can find. If the perimeter drain is clear, that is a pipe leading away from your house. If it is silted up, that is your basement wall.

Flushing them is straightforward and cheap relative to what it prevents. The part that matters is doing it before the wet season rather than during, when the whole region is calling at once.

We flush the line and camera it, so you know whether you bought another few years or whether there is a crushed section that flushing will never fix.

✓Flushed, then inspected — so you know the condition, not just that water moved today.
✓Camera and locating — silt, roots, a belly and a collapse all need different answers.
✓Downspout connections checked — downspouts discharging into the perimeter line wash sediment straight into it.
✓Best done before October — not in the middle of an atmospheric river.
✓Honest limits — we do not excavate; if it needs digging you get the footage to prove it.

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What We Handle

Flushing silted perimeter drains
Camera inspection and locating
Root intrusion in the drain line
Damp at the base of basement walls
Pooling against the foundation
Downspout and cleanout checks
Sump pump repair
Sump pumps and battery backup

Local Conditions

Where This Matters Most

The North Shore

North and West Vancouver take more rain than anywhere else in the region, and steep lots move a lot of water toward the foundation in a hurry.

Richmond, Ladner, Tsawwassen

Low ground with a high water table means perimeter drains and sump pumps are working continuously through the winter, with very little margin.

Established neighbourhoods

Mature trees and older systems are a bad combination — roots find perforated pipe easily, because finding water is exactly what roots do.

Blocked drains rarely travel alone. Here is what else we handle.

FAQs

Perimeter Drain Questions

A perforated pipe running around the footing of the house, below floor level, that collects groundwater and carries it away to a storm connection, a sump or daylight. Elsewhere in Canada they are called drain tile or weeping tile — same thing. In Metro Vancouver they do more work than almost any other component of the building.

Water or damp appearing at the base of a basement wall, efflorescence on the concrete, a musty smell that gets worse in the wet season, pooling against the foundation outside, or a sump pit that suddenly runs far more than it used to. Often the first real sign is a wet floor during the first sustained rain of the year.

For most Metro Vancouver homes every few years is sensible, and more often if you have mature trees or the system has silted up before. The right answer for your property comes from a camera, not from a rule of thumb.

Silt, gradually, which is the most common by a distance. After that: roots finding the perforations, crushed or collapsed sections in older systems, and sediment washed in from downspouts that discharge into the same line.

No — replacing perimeter drains is excavation work and we do not excavate. We flush and camera them, and if the footage shows a collapsed or crushed section we will tell you plainly and hand you the video to take to an excavation contractor.

Perimeter Drain Cleaning