Serving Auburn
Groundwater & Basement Water Intrusion in Auburn, NY
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
The creek is high and there has been no storm.
The creek here is the outlet of a large lake, so what it carries depends on how full that lake is rather than on the last few hours of weather. A wet month across the whole catchment raises the lake, and the outlet then runs high for a long stretch afterward. That is why creek levels here persist rather than spiking, and why the lake level is the more useful number to follow.
There is old stonework along the channel and nobody maintains it.
Mill-era walls and works line a great many of these channels and their ownership is frequently unclear, having passed with properties that changed hands many times. Where a wall is failing it changes how the channel behaves for everyone above and below it. The city can say what it holds; where the answer is nothing, it becomes a shared problem among the owners along the reach.
The cellar wall opens a little more every year.
Frost is the usual cause on stone and early poured walls here. Water in the soil beside the wall freezes, expands and pushes, and the wall gives where it can without fully returning in the thaw. That is why the change appears in March rather than during a storm. Keeping the ground beside the wall drier through autumn does more for it than anything done in spring.
Read it with the local conditions on the Auburn page.