Serving Chester
Groundwater & Basement Water Intrusion in Chester, PA
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
How much does the tide matter to a property inland?
It matters wherever the drainage discharges to tidewater, which here is most of the low city. While the tide is up the outfalls cannot discharge, so ordinary rainfall backs up in the system several streets from the river. The same storm on a falling tide often passes with no trouble at all.
Rowhouses leave almost no open ground.
They do not, and that is a real hydrological condition rather than an aesthetic one. Continuous roof and paving across a block sends nearly the whole rainfall to the street within minutes, so the drainage handles a volume the same area of open ground would have partly absorbed. The density long predates any expectation of managing that.
The waterfront was heavy industry for a century.
It was, and that leaves fill, buried foundations and old service runs across a good deal of it. Those features carry water along routes no surface survey would predict, and the records from that period are incomplete. On former works ground it is worth establishing what is actually beneath a parcel.
These questions come from the Chester page.