Building envelope leak detection. The stain lies. The entry point doesn't.

Because assemblies are designed to shed water downward and sideways — and they keep doing it even with water on the wrong side of the cladding. Entry water rides framing, sheathing, and membrane surfaces until gravity finds it an exit: a fixture penetration, a window head, a floor line. Metres of lateral travel are routine. Repairs aimed at the exit miss the entry by definition, which is why caulking the stained window so often changes nothing.

Calibrated spray applied to one building interface at a time — a specific flashing, a window perimeter, a deck threshold — in a deliberate sequence, usually lowest-first, while the interior is monitored. When one interface reproduces the leak and the others don't, the diagnosis stops being an opinion. It's the envelope world's equivalent of reproducing a bug: until it reproduces, everything is speculation.

Storms test every interface simultaneously and tell you nothing about which one failed — that's precisely the problem. They also run on their own schedule, soak the assembly deeper each time, and never produce documentation. Controlled testing isolates variables on demand and yields evidence a contractor, council, or warranty provider can act on. The storm is the symptom generator; the test is the diagnosis.

Rainscreen construction puts a drained, ventilated cavity behind the cladding so water that penetrates the outer face drains out and dries instead of soaking the assembly. BC mandated it broadly around 2000 after the leaky-condo era proved what face-sealed walls do in coastal rain. Pre-rainscreen buildings aren't doomed — but entries matter more in them, because trapped water rots rather than drains. Era changes urgency and repair philosophy, not the detection method.

Completely. Vertical rain mostly tests roofs; wind-driven rain pressurises walls — forcing water upward under laps, sideways past seals, and into details that never see moisture otherwise. That's why so many BC leaks appear only in southeast blows or only past a wind threshold, and why the exposure interview ('which storms?') is a genuine diagnostic instrument. Testing protocols simulate that pressure deliberately.

Wet materials store and conduct heat differently than dry ones, so a wall's interior face carries a readable temperature signature where the assembly is wet — bounded zones, trails, and wicking patterns that map the moisture field through paint and drywall. Imaging doesn't 'see water'; it sees the thermal consequence, which probes then verify and quantify. It's the reconnaissance layer that tells the water testing where to aim.

Different jobs, frequently sequential. We diagnose: find entries, prove paths, document moisture fields — fast, instrument-led, repair-scoped. Envelope consultants design: remediation specifications, contract administration, assembly engineering, warranty certification. Single proven entries usually need only a competent trade. Findings that reveal systemic assembly failure justify the consultant — who then starts from our evidence instead of from zero, which owners' budgets appreciate.

Emphatically — deck membranes, door thresholds, guardrail attachments, and deck-to-wall flashings are among BC's most prolific entry points, and their leaks routinely surface a storey below or several metres sideways, well disguised. The same trace-and-test discipline applies, with flood testing joining spray testing where membranes are suspect.

Elevation-scale reconnaissance that ladders can't economically match: full façades imaged radiometrically in one flight, anomaly zones flagged for targeted hands-on testing — especially valuable on towers, steep sites, and buildings where swing-stage access would cost more than the whole investigation. It aims the precision work; the water testing still supplies the proof.

They're built to: dated, photographed, methodology-stated, with the entry point proven by reproduction rather than asserted. Insurers distinguish sudden plumbing events from gradual seepage — our documentation addresses exactly that line. For new-home warranty files, a precisely documented installation defect typically converts dispute into repair scheduling.

Single-symptom residential files commonly resolve in one visit: interview, mapping, exterior survey, and targeted testing inside a few hours. Multi-suite strata and multi-elevation commercial files run as programs — typically days, scheduled around access and weather windows. Either way the deliverable lands as a written, evidence-attached finding, not a verbal hunch.

Investigations start in the mid hundreds. The alternatives it displaces: serial resealing campaigns (hundreds each, none diagnostic), speculative recladding quotes (five to six figures, scoped on assumption), and years of quiet rot (the most expensive option ever offered for free). One proven entry point routinely retires all three. The free consult prices your specific file in five minutes: 604-239-9934.