Water & Sewer Service
Connection Site Plans

A survey with grades and property boundaries, the architectural site plan, and the fixture count or floor plans. The survey is the one that holds things up most often — the connection drawing is set out from it, so it cannot be drawn properly without one.

Plan on at least one. Municipal review commonly returns comments on service sizing, connection location or conflicts with existing plant, and the drawing is revised in response. That back-and-forth is part of the job and we carry it through to acceptance rather than handing it back to you.

They get located and coordinated before anything is dug. Where a proposed connection conflicts with existing utility plant, that has to be resolved on the drawing — finding it in the trench is expensive and delays the connection.

A site plan showing the proposed water service location, prepared and sealed by a BC-registered professional engineer, and mechanical details showing the plumbing configuration and the building’s peak domestic water demand. We produce the site plan, and where the plumbing design is ours as well, the mechanical details come out of the same package. Requirements vary by municipality and by project, so send us what you were asked for.

In the City of Vancouver it depends on the building type, and the wording catches people out. A single detached house — with or without a laneway house or secondary suite — a duplex, or a laneway house on its own is one combined residential permit. A multiplex, a duplex with an infill dwelling, anything over three dwelling units, and commercial or industrial buildings need two separate commercial permits, one for sewer and one for water, because the connections are larger. Multiplex clients are usually surprised their project counts as commercial. Other municipalities divide it differently, so we check which applies before drawing.

Yes. Municipalities word it differently — a service connection drawing, a water and sewer connection site plan, an engineered site plan — but it is the same thing: the connection layout drawn to the municipal standard and sealed by a professional engineer, submitted with your permit application. The City of Vancouver and each municipality have their own standards and we draw to whichever applies. Send us the wording you were given.

Yes, often decisively. A sprinklered building draws its fire demand through the same service as its domestic water, so the connection has to carry both. That is why the sprinkler hydraulic calculation and the connection sizing need to be done against each other rather than in isolation — a service sized on fixture count alone can turn out too small once the sprinkler demand is added, and upsizing it after the connection is in is expensive.

For the municipal submission, yes — the connection site plan is sealed by a professional engineer (P.Eng.). Where the work also falls under a building permit, the Letters of Assurance — Schedules B and C-B — are issued for the mechanical discipline alongside it.

No, though they are related and often done together. Plumbing design covers the system inside the building. The connection site plan covers what happens between the building and the municipal main in the street — and it is a separate permit submission.