Serving Ithaca
Structural Drying & Dehumidification in Ithaca, NY
Commercial dehumidifiers and air movers remove moisture from the structure, with daily readings logged from the material itself for claim documentation. Structural drying brings building materials back to a documented dry standard using air movers and dehumidifiers rather than surface evaporation alone. Moisture readings are logged through the process so the substrate, not just the surface, is confirmed dry before anything is rebuilt.
Frequently asked questions
Are the flats or the hills better?
Neither, and they need entirely different thinking. The flats sit on saturated lake sediment with a high water table, so basements there take groundwater and the sump is the critical system. The hills have thin soil over shale, so water travels laterally along the rock and arrives at uphill walls under pressure, and interception above the house is what works. Advice from a neighbor at the other elevation is usually the wrong advice.
The gorge stream rose and fell within an hour.
A stream dropping hundreds of feet over a short distance responds almost immediately to rain on the hills above, and it drops just as quickly. That leaves no useful warning time and it means the flow carries a great deal of energy and debris rather than simply rising. Anything in the path has to be protected permanently rather than moved when rain starts, because there is no interval in which to move it.
The house is rented and empty over the summer.
That is the configuration where a small failure becomes a large loss. A supply line or an appliance connection that goes in an empty house runs until someone arrives, and a summer break is long. Shutting the water off when a unit is vacant caps the volume, which is what determines the size of the loss. A low-temperature alarm covers the winter version of the same problem.
This FAQ belongs to the Ithaca page; it is repeated here.