Serving Pittsburgh
Groundwater & Basement Water Intrusion in Pittsburgh, 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
The stain is on the uphill brick and the roof looks fine. Where should we look?
Uphill. On a Pittsburgh slope the catchment is the house above you, and a downspout that ends at the property line is wetting your wall. A conversation about that outlet, or a small diversion past your foundation, is usually the first repair. Then extract what reached the basement and dry the stained brick. A new roof on your house will not stop the neighbor's June discharge.
The cellar grate erupted in a storm. Is that the hillside?
That is the sewer. Combined lines in the flats surcharge in heavy rain, and the floor grate is the relief. It is a different problem from the buried wall, and it is Category 3, not groundwater. Extract and disinfect; do not treat it as a spring in the shale. A check valve on the lateral stops this reverse. Hillside seepage wets a wall. It does not come up a drain.
The house has been on this hill for eighty years and now the wall is cracking. Why now?
Shale and clay fail slowly, then all at once. Decades of wet-dry cycling on a slope can be the timetable, and a blocked uphill drain or a new patio above you can be the trigger. Cracks then become the path June rain uses to enter. The age of the house is not a guarantee that the ground is finished moving. A contractor should look at the slope and the uphill drainage, not only at patching the crack.
These questions come from the Pittsburgh page.