When Cadillac Fairview was looking for a solution to systemic pipe problems in two of its office towers at Pacific Centre, it had to be a very tenant-friendly one.

Both of the affected office towers are 40 year old landmarks in downtown Vancouver, and their original copper plumbing systems have been carrying the city’s aggressive water since day one. In the last year plumbing leaks were beginning to seriously disrupt building operations, threaten tenants’ valuable assets, and flushing dissolved copper out into the environment daily.

Don Mortimer, Facilities Manager for Pacific Centre, had first considered repiping the two office towers. He knew though, that even the best managed repipe project would:

• take multiple weeks to complete
• be highly intrusive to tenants
• require recycling and disposal of drywall, copper pipe, and other building materials
• be expensive, in both labor and materials including new drywall and copper pipes
• install new copper plumbing systems that would corrode all over again

In the end Mortimer and his consulting engineers chose CuraFlo’s repipe alternative: epoxy lining the existing copper pipes with CuraPoxy^®. Even though CuraFlo offers superior and holistic repiping services, Mortimer chose our epoxy pipe lining services because of the:

• shorter project completion time
• lower level of disruption to tenants
• reduced costs in labor and materials
• greener aspect: minimal amounts of copper and drywall would be removed and replaced, and dissolved copper will no longer be flushed out into the environment

Pacific Centre management and the two office towers' tenants are enjoying leak free pipes, thanks to the greener solution that extended the plumbing systems’ service life by another 40-60 years.