Utility Locating in Vancouver, BC

Before any excavation, trenching, or ground disturbance on your property, knowing exactly what lies beneath the surface is essential for safety, regulatory compliance, and project budget management. British Columbia has a diverse underground infrastructure landscape — from the complex utility corridors of Vancouver's downtown core to the rural water and septic systems of the Fraser Valley — and striking an unmarked utility can cause service disruptions, safety hazards, and significant financial liability. At LeakInspection.ca, we provide professional utility locating services that map buried pipes, cables, conduits, and tanks before you dig.

Our utility locating service uses electromagnetic (EM) induction and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technologies to detect and trace buried utilities. EM locating works by inducing an electromagnetic field onto a metallic pipe or cable and then tracing that signal along its path using a receiver. This method is highly effective for tracing metallic water pipes, gas lines, electrical conduits, and telecommunications cables. For non-metallic utilities — plastic water pipes, PVC conduits, fibre optic cables — we use GPR, which can detect the buried objects directly regardless of material composition. By combining both technologies, we provide comprehensive utility mapping for virtually any buried infrastructure.

Our utility locating process follows BC One Call (BC1) standards and best practices. We begin with a site review and a request for existing utility records. On site, we mark the proposed excavation area and conduct systematic scanning using EM and GPR equipment. Located utilities are marked on the ground using the standardized colour code (red for electric, yellow for gas, blue for water, green for sewer, orange for communications). We provide depth information where possible and note any utilities that cannot be definitively located. Our reports include site plans with the mapped utility locations, photographs, and a summary of findings. We serve homeowners planning landscape or foundation work, contractors preparing for excavation, strata corporations investigating underground infrastructure, and municipalities requiring accurate utility records for capital projects.