Metro Hydrovac Toronto provides hydrovac services in Toronto, Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Brampton and Oakville, backed by 20 years of non-destructive excavation across the GTA. Hydrovac is a digging method that cuts soil loose with 3,000-4,000 PSI water and lifts it into a debris tank with a 27 inch Hg vacuum, so buried gas, hydro, fiber and water lines are exposed without a bucket ever touching them. We run it for hydrovac excavation, utility daylighting, slot trenching, pile holes and vacuum truck services across the Greater Toronto Area.
Founder Alex Novak grew up in East York watching his father work on municipal sewer crews for the City of Toronto. He took the Humber College Civil Engineering Technician program in his twenties, then spent 7 years running a vacuum truck for a Mississauga environmental services contractor doing confined space cleanouts and hazmat response. He bought his first used Vactor 2100i in 2004 and launched Metro Hydrovac Toronto out of a rented East End yard. Twenty years later he runs a Toronto truck yard with three hydrovac units, in-house maintenance and ON1Call-certified crews across the GTA.
Last month we finished a $18,400 CAD fiber corridor daylighting project for a telecom GC in the Toronto Port Lands after they had already had one dig-in with a different crew. We exposed 180 ft of buried fiber over three days using 27 inch Hg vacuum and 3,500 PSI, and the ON1Call locator signed off on the first visit.
Our crews handle commercial contracts from $15,000 to $180,000 CAD. We have daylighted Bell Canada fiber on Lakeshore Blvd, cleaned catch basins for the City of Toronto program on Danforth Ave, and exposed 12 Alectra Utilities hydro vaults across Mississauga.
Every job is run by in-house Red Seal certified operators on three owned hydrovac trucks with 2,500 to 6,000 gallon tanks. We buy direct from 8 Canadian suppliers for Vactor, Vac-Con, Super Products and X-Vac parts, GSPECS pressure wands, Hannay reels and hydraulic fittings, so a broken part means hours of downtime, not weeks.
In our opinion, running a hydrovac without ON1Call locates is like merging onto the 401 without checking your mirrors. Hydrovac to a buried utility is like a dental X-ray to a tooth: you want the picture before you reach for the drill. Open-cut excavation around a known fiber line is like a Halloween-store scissors: cheap, fast, and you'll regret the result for months. Nine times out of ten, this is where the previous contractor cut a corner.
“At Metro Hydrovac Toronto, our vision is to expose Toronto's underground infrastructure safely, every single time, so our GC and utility clients never have to explain a dig-in to a project manager or insurance adjuster. We enjoy the moment a buried fiber or gas line emerges clean and the client realizes we actually meant it when we said non-destructive. We routinely hear that we exceeded their expectations, and this is what brings us joy.”
