Water Damage Restoration in Brooklyn

Overview

Water damage in every kind of Brooklyn home

Brooklyn covers every kind of home there is: brownstones and row houses, prewar apartment buildings and co-ops, single-family and two- and three-family houses, and the newer high-rises downtown and along the waterfront. What they share is that water damage moves fast in all of them. The usual culprits, burst pipes, water-heater failures, appliance leaks, and frozen pipes in winter, hit Brooklyn homes the same as anywhere. What makes Brooklyn distinct is how much of it lives below grade: finished basements and garden-level apartments flood first, and the borough's low-lying coastal edges add tidal and storm-surge risk on top.

Burst and frozen pipes in Brooklyn buildings

Brooklyn's older buildings have their own weak spots. In brownstones and row houses, the kitchen and bathroom are often in a back extension with thin, poorly insulated exterior walls, and those are the pipes that freeze first. In prewar walk-ups, the original risers carry water to every floor, so a burst on the top floor can come down through every apartment below it.

Know where your shutoff is before you need it. In a house, the main valve is usually in the basement or cellar, on the front wall where the water line comes in from the street. In an apartment, there may be a valve under the sink or behind an access panel, but often only the super can shut off the riser. More on burst pipe cleanup and frozen pipe damage.

Garden-level apartments and finished basements

A garden-level apartment sits partly below the sidewalk, which makes it the first place water ends up. Heavy rain can back up through the floor drain. Window wells packed with leaves fill like a bucket and leak through the window frame. A leak upstairs finds its way down through the ceiling. Clearing window wells and floor drains every fall is a small job that prevents a lot of calls. If what comes up through the floor drain is dark and smells like sewage, it is no longer a water job. See sewage cleanup in Brooklyn.

When it does flood, the damage hides behind the finishes: drywall wicks water up from the floor, and carpet pad and laminate hold it against the slab. We read the walls and floor with moisture meters before deciding what comes out, and we only open up what's wet. See basement water damage. Most people ask how long drying takes; in a brownstone with plaster walls it is usually a few days longer than drywall.

How a Brooklyn job runs, start to finish

• We stop the source, or make sure it's stopped, and get standing water out
• We map the moisture, including next door, upstairs or downstairs if the water crossed a party wall or a ceiling
• Wet materials that can't be dried come out. Everything else stays and gets dried
• Air movers and dehumidifiers run for a few days, with readings every day
• Once the readings say it's dry, we rebuild what was removed, so you deal with one company the whole way