Service area · British Columbia
Strata Water Leak Prevention in North Vancouver.
North Vancouver is two municipalities and two kinds of building. The new concrete towers around Lower Lonsdale sit alongside a much older body of wood-frame low-rise, and a water strategy that suits one does not automatically suit the other.
What we see in North Vancouver buildings
The older low-rise stock is the more urgent case. Wood-frame assemblies carry water sideways as readily as down, so a failure in an upper unit can surface in a suite that shares no wall with it — and those buildings are now at an age where the original supply plumbing is well into its second half.
The newer Lonsdale towers have the opposite profile: sound plumbing, high suite values, and a strata corporation that would rather not establish a claims history in its first decade.
Why councils here act
Councils on the North Shore tend to arrive at this through the renewal. A water claim history follows a building, and in a smaller strata corporation the deductible is a larger share of what the contingency reserve fund can absorb.
The practical appeal of automatic shutoff in an older low-rise is simpler than the insurance argument. These are buildings where nobody is on site overnight, and the difference between a leak that runs for four hours and one that runs for forty seconds is the difference between a remediation project and a plumber’s invoice.
How it goes in here
Licensed North Shore contractors carry out the installation, coordinated by a project manager who deals with your council or property manager rather than with owners individually.
In an older low-rise the wireless devices avoid the problem that usually stalls these projects — there is often nowhere sensible to run new cable. Point-of-leak sensors go into the wet zones, the in-line sensor goes on the supply, and no resident’s Wi-Fi is involved.
Questions councils in North Vancouver ask
- Our building is a 1980s wood-frame low-rise. Is retrofitting realistic?
- That is the most common retrofit there is. The devices are wireless and run on a private LoRa network, so there is no cable to route through an old assembly, and the in-line sensor and valve go in at the supply during a normal shutdown window.
- We are a small strata with a modest contingency reserve fund.
- Then phasing is the point. Protecting the common water supply first is a materially smaller capital item than a full-building program, and it covers the failure mode that produces the largest claims. The rest can follow in a later budget year.
- Does it work if the building’s internet goes down?
- Yes. The devices reach the gateway over a private encrypted LoRa network rather than over building or resident Wi-Fi, and alerting does not depend on any resident’s connection staying up.
Governance references on this page describe common practice under the BC Strata Property Act. They are general information rather than legal advice — your strata lawyer or property manager is the authority on what your building must do.
What gets installed
The same system goes into every building: an in-line flow sensor on the supply, wireless point-of-leak sensors in the wet zones, and an automatic shut-off valve that closes when something is wrong. It is set out in full on the home page, and every data sheet is on the downloads page. What changes from building to building is the sequencing, not the hardware.
Book a free building assessment
A specialist attends the building, walks the risers and mechanical rooms, and leaves a written recommendation your council can put in front of an owner meeting or a broker. No cost and no obligation.