Serving New Haven
Groundwater & Basement Water Intrusion in New Haven, CT
Basement seepage, failed sumps, and hydrostatic pressure against the foundation are extracted and dried, and the path from the ground is identified so the loss does not repeat. Groundwater and basement seepage are extracted and dried only after the path from the soil is identified — a wall, a slab, a drain, or a failed sump. Drying the interior without stopping that path returns the same water to the same floor.
Frequently asked questions
Waterfront or the higher ground: which applies here?
They are unrelated problems. Down on the made ground the material is soft, sits close to the tide, and water arrives from beneath. On the higher ground the trouble is a main relieving itself into cellars during a violent cell. Applying one set of remedies to the other situation is the commonest waste of money in this city.
The cellar drain backed up with the street perfectly dry.
What surfaced is the street's water rather than the ground's, and that difference decides where money is worth spending. A main that has filled discharges through whichever connected opening lies lowest, which in a house of this age is the cellar drain. Guttering and regrading change nothing at all; a valve on the line does, as does pumped drainage.
A day without rain and the drain is still holding water.
Check the tide before concluding there is an obstruction. A pipe whose outlet stands under water cannot discharge, so the line holds everything until the level drops. The difficulty is the overlap rather than the delay: anything falling inside that window has no route out at all, and that coincidence is what floods the low streets.
The same questions, in context, on the New Haven mold removal page.