Vancouver · Since 2001
Epoxy and industrial floor coatings in Vancouver.
Downtown towers, older East Van industrial stock and a lot of residential parkades built between the seventies and the nineties — which is exactly the vintage now reaching the end of its original membrane life.
Vancouver
The pattern we see in Vancouver
Downtown, the recurring job is a ramp or an entry deck that has been taking de-icing salt and traffic for thirty years, on a building that cannot close. Most of our downtown work is scheduled at night for that reason — hotels, office towers and mixed-use buildings where losing the ramp during the day is not an option.
East of Main, it is older industrial slabs on grade, frequently with no vapour barrier under them. Those floors need moisture testing before anything is specified, because the reading routinely comes back above what a standard primer will tolerate.
In the residential towers, the driver is usually a depreciation report finally putting a number on the parkade. If yours has, bring that section to the site visit — we can write the scope to match how the report framed it.
- Common systems
- TUE-FC · EWS
- Typical work window
- Nights and weekends
- Phasing
- By level or by bay
Services
What we install in Vancouver
Parkade waterproofing
Traffic-bearing membranes for Vancouver parkades, ramps and roof decks.
Learn more →Industrial floor coatings
Epoxy and urethane systems for Vancouver warehouses and plants.
Learn more →Local conditions
What Vancouver does to concrete
Vancouver's concrete problem is water with a salt habit. The city's parkades spend November to March receiving vehicles that carry road brine in on every tyre, and the older the building, the longer that chloride has had to work on the reinforcing steel. Downtown and the West End run on suspended parkade slabs under towers from every decade since the sixties; Yaletown and Coal Harbour added deep multi-level parkades through the condo booms; and the strata corporations that own them are now working through depreciation reports that flag membranes by name. It is the single most consequential coating decision most Vancouver buildings ever make.
The commercial and industrial side concentrates east and south — the Mount Pleasant and False Creek Flats employment lands, the Grandview industrial pockets off Clark, and the Marine Drive corridor toward the river. Buildings there mix heritage slab-on-grade with tilt-up from the eighties onward, which means moisture conditions vary building to building and the slab, not the postcode, decides the system. Restaurant density from Gastown through Main Street keeps commercial kitchens failing at their usual rate, and the answer there is chemistry, not paint.
Work in the city core comes with city-core logistics: permits and lane access, loading windows, noise bylaws with real teeth, and buildings that never fully empty. Phasing is not an accommodation here — it is the specification, whether that is a parkade recoated level by level or a restaurant floor replaced between close and prep.
Where the work is
From tower parkades to the Flats
The pattern of Vancouver work: strata parkade membranes and traffic coatings under residential towers; ramp and porte-cochère systems for hotels that cannot close, including a documented 8,400 square foot downtown hotel ramp completed entirely as night work; commercial kitchens and back-of-house floors through the hospitality core; and industrial builds in the Flats and along Marine Drive. Exposed amenity decks and plaza slabs add a UV-stable membrane specification the North Shore knows well — salt air included, closer to the water.
The systems come from the manufacturer lines we install everywhere — traffic membranes for the parkades, urethane cement where heat and washing rule, epoxy builds for the industrial floors — detailed in the systems library, with the parkade decision itself walked through in our depreciation report guide.
Questions
What Vancouver clients ask us.
How do you work on a downtown Vancouver parkade with no lay-down space?
Downtown sites usually have no room for material storage, so we stage deliveries to arrive per phase rather than dropping the whole job on site. Equipment goes in through the parkade itself where the ramp clearance allows it, and waste leaves the same night. On tower sites we also have to work around loading bay bookings, which we arrange with building management before the schedule is fixed rather than on the morning of.
Our building is from the 1970s. Is the parkade slab likely to need concrete repair?
Often, yes. Vancouver's older concrete stock predates modern chloride protection, and after decades of road salt tracked in from the streets the reinforcing steel in suspended slabs is commonly corroding somewhere. We sound the slab and take cores before quoting, because on a building of that vintage the repair quantity is the number that decides the budget, not the membrane area.
Can you work in a heritage or mixed-use building with tenants above?
Yes. The constraints are odour, noise and vibration reaching the units above, so we use low-odour systems where the schedule allows, run negative-air containment, and confine grinding and shot blasting to agreed hours. In mixed-use buildings with retail at grade, the retail hours usually govern the noisy work more tightly than the residential ones do.
How does Vancouver rain affect the schedule?
On an enclosed parkade, barely at all — the deck is protected and we control the ambient conditions inside. On exposed top levels and roof decks it matters a great deal, because these systems need a dry substrate and a dry cure window. We build weather contingency into exposed-deck phases and we will stop rather than install a membrane onto a substrate that is not dry. A membrane installed in the wrong conditions fails, and it fails on your dime and our reputation.
Site assessments
Have a slab in Vancouver you're worried about?
Photographs and a rough area are enough to start. We'll come out, test moisture, and scope it properly.
Main (236) 873-2580 · Second (604) 230-0256 · estimating@westpacificcoatings.com