Flood Restoration in North Vancouver

A blocked culvert or a well can fill the lower level in one evening. We start inside: pump, chalk the waterline, and get wet contents up. The municipal blockage is the city's. The finished basement is ours.

Photos of the culvert, the well, and the line on the wall keep those two responsibilities from being blurred. Deep Cove houses on the same kind of street get that same split. We do not wait on a crew for the ditch before we extract a basement that is still holding water.

The uphill wall is the wet wall. Batts come off it. The floor comes up along that side, then across the room if the water crossed. Capilano daylight basements cut into the slope follow that order.

Retaining concrete stays cold. Drying aimed at the middle of the room misses it. We meter the wall in a grid, low and high, and we compare it to the downhill side. The downhill side is often the control that tells us the uphill side is not done.

Lower streets are where a true sewer backup shows up more often than on the steep lots. Dirty water means a longer removal list. We photograph the drain and keep the debris contained.

If the same storm also pushed surface water in at a stair, both inlets get written. One category line for two kinds of water is how the wrong material gets saved. The pad does not survive a drain. A short surface-water film might still ruin it. We look at what it touched.

Condo stacks fail between floors and flood the suite below. We extract the floor, lift contents, and dry the concrete. The suite above is named. A parkade that took water at the ramp is included when the water connected, and left as its own note when it did not.

Corridor protection and a debris path matter more here than in a house with a side door. The ceiling of the flooded suite is part of the waterline, not a separate stain to patch next month.