From The Field
Sewage cleanup in Cypress Hills
Sewage Cleanup · Cypress Hills
Cypress Hills sits on the Brooklyn and Queens line, and most of its homes are older two- and three-family houses with a basement that takes the hit when a line backs up.
Most of Cypress Hills is attached brick row houses and frame two- and three-family homes, many of them close to a hundred years old. The basement is where the house keeps its working parts: the boiler, the water heater, the laundry, the main drain line and the house trap. In a lot of homes it is also storage, a workshop, or a small apartment.
That makes the basement the first place sewage shows up. Whether it comes back from the street in a storm or out of a cracked pipe inside the house, it collects at the lowest point, and that is where the boiler, the stored belongings and sometimes a tenant are.
We handle sewer backups, toilet overflows and basement sewage backups across the neighborhood, from the blocks off Jamaica Avenue down toward Atlantic Avenue and over to City Line.
What We See
For storm backups, NYC DEP recommends a backwater valve on the main line, installed by a licensed plumber. In a two- or three-family house, one clogged line can carry waste from every unit. When it backs up, the basement gets all of it.
Easy To Miss
Plenty of Cypress Hills basements only see someone on laundry day or when the heat acts up. A cast iron line that splits along the back wall can drip for a week with nobody around to hear it or smell it. When it finally gets noticed, the floor is covered and the damp air has worked its way up the drywall, into the insulation and across to rooms the water never touched.
That is a bigger job than a fast backup that gets caught in an hour. When the walls are damp all the way up, a flood cut a couple of feet high is not enough, and full sections of wall come out. It is also why a sewage smell can stay after a quick cleanup.
A two-minute look on Sunday night does the job. Check the floor around the boiler, the floor drain and the laundry standpipe. A musty or sewer smell that was not there last week is a reason to call a plumber before it turns into a cleanup.
How The Job Runs
Sewage is Category 3 black water, so none of this is a mop-and-bucket job. Here is why a sewage backup is a biohazard.
From The Field
Two-Family Homes
A lot of Cypress Hills homes have a family member or a tenant living on the lowest floor. When the basement backs up, that is someone's bedroom and kitchen. We clean and decontaminate the living space first, keep the work area sealed off from the rest of the house, and photograph and list damaged belongings so the owner and the tenant each have what their insurance company needs.
We clean up what came out of the line and dry the structure. The pipe itself is a job for a licensed plumber. We tell them what we found, where the walls are open, and where we think the leak or the clog is, so they are not starting from scratch. In New York, the owner is responsible for the line from the house all the way to the city main under the street.
We also cover East New York, Highland Park and the rest of Brooklyn, and right across the line into Woodhaven and Ozone Park in Queens. Our sewage cleanup page walks through the whole process. For a backup happening right now, call 646-543-2242.
We are based in Brooklyn and run 24/7. Depending on the hour and traffic, a crew is usually there within 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
No. Stop using every sink, toilet, shower and appliance in the house until the line is cleared. Every drain in the building ends up in the same pipe, and it comes back up in the basement.
Sometimes. Insurers look at where the water came from. Sewer water coming back up a drain is usually covered only with a water backup endorsement, while a line that breaks suddenly inside the house is often reviewed under the main policy. Old pipes that leaked slowly for a long time can be a harder claim. Call your agent, and keep our photos and readings for the adjuster.
Often, yes, if the water did not get into the burner or the controls. Do not run them until a heating contractor or plumber checks them. We clean and treat the area around them.
Water, fire, mold, or sewage, one call starts the recovery. We show up fast and we do not leave until it is done right.
Call 646-543-2242 Request ServiceRequest Service
We'll call you right back, and give you a free estimate. For an active emergency, the fastest way to reach us is by phone, day or night.