Serving Pittsburgh
Structural Drying & Dehumidification in Pittsburgh, PA
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
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.