Ceiling & Roof Leak Water Damage Repair in Cincinnati, OH

From the sewer, not the sky. The Mill Creek basin still runs combined, so a May storm that packs the interceptors has nowhere to go but back through the lowest cellar fixture. The yard can look dry while the basement takes the neighborhood's runoff. That is Category 3. Extract, disinfect, and treat porous finish as a loss. A backflow preventer is the fixture-level fix; grading the yard will not stop this path.

A different one. The hill sheds rather than surcharges: every lot is a catchment for the one below, and a brick row puts downspouts against the next buried masonry. You are out of the combined-sewer reverse-flow and into a gravity problem. Keep the uphill neighbor's discharge off your wall, and dry that buried masonry after a cell. Floor-drain backups belong to the basin, not to the hill.

It can be either, and they are not the same job. When the Little Miami and the Ohio are both high, the eastern flats take backwater — river water, Category 3, coming in at openings and up through the soil. A floor-drain event with the rivers in their banks is still the combined sewer. Look at the river gauges and at which fixture or wall got wet. A local pro should name the source before setting the scope.