Heritage and character homes around Kitsilano, Mount Pleasant, and Kerrisdale often need careful cedar, slate, or torch-on work that respects the original detailing, while flat and low-slope roofs are common on the city's modern boxes and laneway houses. Persistent moss and the city's heavy rainfall make ventilation, flashing, and rainscreen detailing the difference between a roof that lasts and one that leaks.
No two blocks in Vancouver carry the same roofline. A single Kitsilano street can run from a 1912 gable to a 2015 laneway flat-top, and the right detail for one would fail on the next. That variety is what we plan around on every estimate, because the wet coast punishes any shortcut the same way regardless of the home’s age.
Housing eras across the West Side and East Van
Vancouver’s roofs and walls tell the story of how the city grew, and every era needs a different hand. The pre-war Craftsman bungalows and Edwardian foursquares around Grandview-Woodland and Strathcona were framed with steep pitches meant for cedar; many now carry their third or fourth covering, and the original board sheathing underneath still dictates what can go back on. The Vancouver Special — that boxy two-storey that filled lots across Renfrew, Sunset, and Killarney from the mid-1960s into the 1980s — brought shallow front pitches and stucco walls that age poorly against wind-driven rain. Newer laneway houses and infill duplexes lean on flat membranes and tight, engineered wall assemblies. Knowing which decade a home comes from tells us most of what the job will need.
Why walls here need a gap behind them
After the leaky-condo crisis of the 1990s, BC’s building code made drained, vented wall assemblies the standard — and for good reason. Face-sealed stucco that performed fine in drier climates trapped moisture against sheathing on the coast and rotted it from behind. On any re-clad we treat a rainscreen system as the baseline rather than an upgrade: a ventilated cavity behind the cladding lets the wind-driven rain that slips past the surface drain away and dry out. On the wet South Coast, that gap is the single biggest reason a wall lasts.
The work we see most around the city
On the big-canopy streets of Dunbar, Kerrisdale, and Point Grey, north-facing slopes shaded by mature cedars and maples grow moss quickly, so moss treatment and clear, well-pitched gutters keep organic debris from trapping water against the shingles. On the flat and low-slope sections common to Specials, mid-century boxes, and laneway builds, we rely on flat and low-slope membranes built to shed our long wet season and the standing water a shallow roof collects. And when stucco or tired siding has finally given out, fibre-cement (Hardie) over a proper rainscreen gives both character streetscapes and modern infill a durable, low-maintenance wall that holds its colour through the grey months. Done right, those upgrades cut the callbacks that the rain otherwise guarantees on a poorly detailed wall or roof.