CASE STUDY
Capilano Filtration Plant
North Vancouver, BC
The Capilano Filtration Plant is Metro Vancouver’s critical water treatment facility on Lillooet Road, North Vancouver — a 96,000+ sq ft commercial roof system protecting sensitive water treatment infrastructure below. With the modified bitumen roofing across several sections approaching 15–25 years old, ownership retained Pinpoint to conduct a full moisture and thermal survey to determine exactly where the roof was failing and how much of it truly needed to be replaced.
Rather than assume a full tear-off, Pinpoint’s team scanned every section of the roof — D, C, A, and the OMC TPO area — combining infrared thermography with capacitance moisture scanning and core sampling to pinpoint exactly where water had gotten in, and where it hadn’t.
96,281
Sq Ft Roof Surveyed
~2,901
Sq Ft Wet Coverboard Found
3%
Of Total Roof Area Wet
4
Roof Sections Scanned
Apr
2025 Survey Completed
// Survey Scope & Methodology
A targeted scan, not a guessing game
Pinpoint’s team scanned the full roof — sections D, C, A, and the OMC TPO area — using an RWS roof scanner and Tramex capacitance meter, cross-verified with a DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise thermal drone. A calibration core cut in a known-dry area established a moisture baseline before the full survey began.
Where elevated readings appeared, the team hand-verified with a Tramex moisture probe and confirmed with additional core cuts — isolating exactly which zones held trapped moisture rather than condemning the whole roof on partial data.
// What We Found
Moisture isolated to a retrofit detail — not the field membrane
Core sampling on Roof D confirmed saturated fiberboard insulation reading 32% moisture content — well beyond acceptable thresholds — concentrated in the tapered “cricket” sections added during a past retrofit. Those crickets were installed as a fiberboard overlay directly onto the original membrane with no vapor barrier, shifting the roof’s dew point into the fiberboard and driving chronic condensation. The original field membrane itself was confirmed dry.
Roof D1 & D2
16,302 sq ft · 10% wet crickets, main field dry
Roof C1 & C2
11,486 sq ft · No moisture detected, stable
Roof A1 & A2
12,978 sq ft · 10% wet crickets, main field dry
OMC TPO
55,515 sq ft · Prior moisture and repairs noted
Recommendation
A full roof replacement was not necessary. With moisture isolated to the cricket layer and insulation intact and dry across the remaining field, Pinpoint recommended a targeted restoration: removing and replacing membrane and wet coverboard in the affected cricket zones, then skimming and installing new coverboard and membrane across all sections — restoring the full surface without the cost of a complete tear-off.
Project Participants
Client :
Capilano Filtration Plant / Garland Canada
Location:
4400 Lillooet Rd, North Vancouver, BC
Roof System:
Modified bitumen with TPO section, retrofit fiberboard crickets
Survey Method:
RWS roof scanner, Tramex probe + DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise thermal drone
Delivered by:
Pinpoint Inspections
Capilano Filtration Plant
Case Study PDF