Building Next to Neighbours in Burnaby: Noise Hours, Street Permits, and Site Manners

A custom home on a 33-foot lot in Burnaby Heights gets built a few metres from a family on each side. They did not hire us. They will hear the excavator, look at the hoarding for a year, and find a concrete truck idling at the end of their driveway if nobody planned for it. The owner has to live beside these people afterwards, so how the site behaves matters as much as how the house turns out.

The City of Burnaby sets the outer limits. What we do inside those limits is where most of the goodwill gets won or lost.

The noise bylaw sets the working day

Burnaby's construction noise rules are short and worth memorising. According to the City of Burnaby noise page, no construction, reconstruction, alteration, repair, landscaping or demolition can occur Monday to Friday between 8 pm and 7 am, on Saturday between 8 pm and 9 am, or on Sundays and statutory holidays. At any time, the continuous noise should not exceed 85 dBA measured at least 15.2 metres from the source in a residential district.

So the legal window is 7 am to 8 pm on weekdays and 9 am to 8 pm on Saturdays.

Our own working day on a Burnaby lot starts later than the bylaw allows. Deliveries, the concrete pump and the excavator do not begin before 8 am, and loud work stops by 6 pm. The hour we give up costs us little on a build that runs more than a year, and it is the first thing a neighbour notices. On a Capitol Hill build in 2025 the neighbour told the owner at the framing stage that she had expected to hate the project and had not, and the reason she gave was that the site was quiet at breakfast.

Complaints go to the City's Licensing office, and the standard the City enforces is the hours and the noise level. We keep a daily log of start and stop times for exactly this reason.

Sidewalks, lanes and the boulevard need a permit

A teardown lot in Burnaby usually has a City sidewalk across its frontage, a boulevard between the sidewalk and the curb, and sometimes a lane behind. All of that is City right-of-way. Parking a bin on it, stacking lumber on it, or closing the sidewalk to swing an excavator across it needs permission.

The Traffic Control Permit is the one that covers closing a road, lane, path, sidewalk, bike lane or any other portion of the City right-of-way. The City approves these for a maximum of 8 weeks, or for another period at its discretion, and if a sidewalk closes the applicant has to arrange a temporary facility consistent with the one being closed, including temporary curb ramps. In practice this means a fenced pedestrian route or a properly signed detour, put up before the closure starts.

We plan the hoarding line so the sidewalk closure is as short as the demolition and excavation need and no longer. Once the foundation is in, the fence comes back to the property line and the sidewalk reopens. A sidewalk that stays closed for the whole build, on a street where people walk to the SkyTrain, is a complaint generator, and the permit clock runs out anyway.

The boulevard tree is a separate matter. The City's Forestry division manages every tree on City property, including boulevard trees, according to the City's tree page. A boulevard maple in front of a Brentwood lot is not the owner's to prune or remove, and the driveway crossing has to go where the City says it can go.

Where the crew parks

Nobody writes this into a contract, and it is the thing that starts the most arguments. A framing crew arrives in several trucks. Plumbers, electricians and the drywall boarders overlap with them. On a standard Burnaby street with parking on one side, that fills the block.

Our rule is that the lot holds as many vehicles as it can. On a teardown lot the driveway apron and the front yard take trucks during excavation and framing. When the foundation is poured we compact and gravel a parking pad on the lot so trades park inside the fence. Trades who have to park on the street park in front of the site, never in front of a neighbour's driveway, and never on the curb where a neighbour's visitors park in the evening.

We put the parking plan in the letter to the neighbours (more on that below). If the lot is tight, and Edmonds and Highgate lots often are, we ask the closest neighbour whether one truck can use the end of their driveway for a set number of weeks, and we pay for it in a gift card or in a favour, like clearing their gutters when the lift is up. Asking beats assuming.

Every neighbour we have ever dealt with cared about three things: the hour the noise starts, where the trucks go, and the tree on the line. Answer those three before demolition and the rest of the year takes care of itself.

Icon Projects Team

Mud, dust and the storm drain

Burnaby's storm drains run to creeks, and the City treats sediment from construction sites as pollution. Its sediment control guidance for residential construction sites says a single-family or two-family site does not need a sediment control permit, but the practices in the document still apply. They are specific: a clear rock access pad, 100 to 150 mm rock with no fines over geotextile fabric, at least 6 metres long and 3 metres wide, built before excavation so trucks do not carry soil off the lot on their tires. Truck movement stays on the pad or on paved surfaces. Any sediment tracked onto the street gets swept back onto the site immediately, and the document is blunt that it must not be flushed down the street. Catch basins that take runoff from the site get protection, and only clear rain water is allowed into the storm system.

We build the pad on day one and we sweep the street every afternoon, by hand if the sweeper is not on site. Soil piles get poly sheeting. On a sloped Sperling-Burnaby Lake lot the runoff wants to go straight to the neighbour's yard, so a perimeter ditch and a sediment trap go in before the excavator does any real digging.

Dust is the demolition-week problem. A hose on the structure while the excavator works keeps the dust down, and the hoarding gets a screen mesh on the side facing the closest house. Asbestos is the reason the hazardous materials survey comes first: WorkSafeBC notes that asbestos was widely used in BC as a building material until the early 1990s and that you cannot tell whether a material contains it by looking. Abatement happens inside a sealed building before the excavator touches it, which is also what protects the neighbours. We walk through the whole sequence in our post on site preparation on a Burnaby teardown lot.

Trees and fences at the property line

A tree on or near the property line is the item most likely to end up in a lawyer's letter, so it gets planned first.

On a property under a development application, which under the Tree Bylaw includes a building permit or a demolition permit, Burnaby protects any tree 20 cm or greater in diameter. The tree-cutting permit is generated automatically inside the building permit application, as the City's new home construction page explains, so every protected tree on the lot gets declared whether it stays or goes.

Protection fencing is where the neighbour's interests and the bylaw line up. The consolidated Burnaby Tree Bylaw requires protection fences to be at least 1.2 metres high, made of plastic snow fencing on wooden posts or wooden or chain link fencing on wooden or metal posts, erected on or outside the dripline of the protected tree, and put up before any demolition, excavation or construction starts. They stay up until the work covered by the permit is complete. The bylaw also defines damage to include compacting the soil inside a tree's dripline with heavy equipment, vehicles or building materials, and placing more than 20 cm of soil inside it.

A neighbour's tree whose canopy hangs over the lot has a dripline on our side of the fence, and the equipment stays out of it. We have the arborist walk the line with the neighbour present when the situation calls for it, mark the dripline on the ground, and photograph the fencing the day it goes up. The Burnaby tree bylaw post covers replacement counts and the cash-in-lieu option if a tree does have to come out.

The fence itself is the other shared item. An old fence on the line usually comes down during demolition because the excavator needs the room. We tell the neighbour in writing which fence is coming down, when it goes back up, and that the new one is on us. Surveying the line before the old fence is removed avoids a dispute later about where it stood.

Meeting the neighbours before the excavator arrives

Two weeks before demolition, a letter goes to every house that can see the lot. It lists the working hours we have set for the site, the parking plan, the expected duration of the loud phases (demolition, excavation, framing) and a phone number that reaches a site supervisor directly. On corner lots and lots with lane access we add a paragraph about which side the trucks come in from.

Then someone from our team knocks on the doors on either side. Five minutes each. The questions are always the same: what time do you leave for work, do you have a baby or a shift worker in the house, do you work from home, and is there anything on the line you are worried about. A shift worker who sleeps until noon changes when we schedule the concrete pump. A home office on the side facing the lot changes where the generator goes.

Demolition itself carries its own paperwork. The City requires a demolition permit with a waste diversion plan, and the demolition waste diversion page sets a minimum of 70 percent diversion of demolition waste to an approved facility. That plan is also what decides how many bin swaps happen in the first two weeks, which is a truck-movement question the neighbours will feel.

Working with City staff is a separate skill, and we have written a playbook for the Burnaby planning department that covers the intake side. Neighbours are simpler than planners. They want to be told first, and they want the site to look like someone is in charge of it.

What we do when a complaint comes in

Complaints still happen. The most common ones on our Burnaby sites over the last few years have been a truck blocking a driveway for ten minutes, a radio on the framing deck, and a delivery that showed up before 8 am because the supplier's dispatcher did not read the instructions.

The response is the same every time. The site supervisor goes over in person the same day, fixes the thing, and follows up with the owner so the owner hears it from us before they hear it over the fence. Radios are gone from our sites now. Suppliers get the delivery window in writing and a call the afternoon before.

An owner who moves into a Burnaby custom home after a year or more of construction wants a neighbour who will lend them a ladder. The bylaw sets the floor. The letter, the sweeping, the parking pad and the fence at the dripline are what get you the ladder.

Frequently asked questions

What hours is construction allowed in Burnaby?

The City of Burnaby's noise rules say no construction, reconstruction, alteration, repair, landscaping or demolition can occur Monday to Friday between 8 pm and 7 am, on Saturday between 8 pm and 9 am, or on Sundays and statutory holidays. That leaves 7 am to 8 pm on weekdays and 9 am to 8 pm on Saturdays. At any time, continuous noise should not exceed 85 dBA measured at least 15.2 metres from the source.

Can a builder work on a Sunday in Burnaby?

Construction and demolition are off the table on Sundays and statutory holidays under Burnaby's noise rules. The City lists a separate allowance for residence alteration or repair by the owner, occupier or a contractor between 9 am and 8 pm on Sundays and holidays, which covers small repair work rather than a custom home build. Our crews on new builds treat Sunday as a day off.

Do I need a permit to close the sidewalk in front of my Burnaby build?

Yes. Closing a road, lane, path, sidewalk, bike lane or any other part of the City right-of-way in Burnaby requires a Traffic Control Permit. The City approves these for a maximum of 8 weeks, or another period at its discretion, and if a sidewalk closes you have to provide a temporary route and curb ramps that match what was there. We apply before demolition and plan the hoarding line so the closure is as short as possible.

Where do construction crews park on a Burnaby custom home site?

On most Burnaby lots the answer is on the lot itself, on the driveway apron, or in a spot the owner has agreed with a neighbour in advance. Taking over the street in front of neighbouring driveways for a year is what generates complaints and City visits. We set a parking plan before the first trade arrives and put it in the letter that goes to the neighbours.

How do you keep mud off the street during a Burnaby build?

The City of Burnaby's sediment control guidance for residential sites calls for a clear rock access pad, at least 6 metres long and 3 metres wide, lined with geotextile fabric and built before excavation, with truck movement limited to the pad or paved surfaces. Any sediment tracked onto the street has to be swept back onto the site straight away, and it cannot be flushed into the storm drain. Single and two-family sites do not need a sediment control permit in Burnaby, but the practices still apply.

Does my neighbour's tree matter when I build in Burnaby?

It does. Burnaby's Tree Bylaw treats a tree of 20 cm or more in diameter on a property under a development application as protected, and the bylaw also prohibits damaging a protected tree, which includes compacting soil within its dripline with equipment, vehicles or materials. A tree on the property line or a neighbour's tree whose canopy crosses the line gets the same protection fencing as a tree on your own lot. We have the arborist map every tree near the line before demolition.

How far in advance should neighbours be told about a demolition in Burnaby?

We give two weeks, and we treat it as a fixed part of the schedule. A letter goes to every house within sight of the lot two weeks before demolition, with the working hours, the parking plan, the expected duration and a phone number that reaches a person. Most calls that would otherwise go to the City come to us instead.

What happens if a neighbour complains to the City of Burnaby about construction noise?

Construction noise complaints in Burnaby go to the City's Licensing office during business hours, and to Burnaby Dispatch after hours for emergencies. The standards the City enforces are the permitted hours and the continuous noise limit, which is why we log start and stop times on site every day and can show them if asked.