Water Damage Restoration in Flatlands

Our Work Here

Flatlands houses and co-ops, wet to rebuilt

Whatever caused it, the job covers the same ground:

• Stopping the source, or showing you the valve that does
• Pumping out standing water and extracting carpet and pad
• Mapping the wet area with moisture meters and thermal imaging, inside walls too
• Cutting out what will not dry, like soaked insulation, swollen paneling and wet pad
• Cleaning and an antimicrobial where the water was dirty
• Drying until the wet wall reads the same as an untouched one
• Putting back walls, floors and paint with our own crew

The inspection and the estimate are free.

A City Planning Commission report on a rezoning at Flatlands Avenue and East 55th Street describes the blocks around it: mostly two-story attached, detached and semi-detached buildings, with apartment buildings of three to six stories mixed in.

That mix decides how we work here. In the houses, the trouble is usually a cellar or a finished basement. In the apartment buildings, it is units stacked on top of each other.

Party Walls

Following water through cellars and shared walls

An attached house shares walls with the houses on both sides, and a semi-detached pair shares one. A supply line that lets go in your kitchen can run along the joists and turn up as a stain on the party wall, or in the cellar next door before yours.

So we do not stop at the spot you can see. A thermal camera shows cooler, damp patches behind paint and paneling. A pin meter confirms what the camera suggests, and we note readings room by room so you can see exactly how far it went.

Downstairs, we check the base of every wall, the bottom plate under a finished room, and the slab around the boiler and water heater. Carpet over concrete and paneling on furring strips are where water hides longest.

If the trail leads next door, we tell you, and with your OK we will talk to your neighbor about checking their side.

Below The Street

Rain, sewers and the Paerdegat Basin

DEP lists parts of Flatlands among the neighborhoods that drain toward Paerdegat Basin, on the northwestern edge of Jamaica Bay. Its monitoring report describes that drainage area as combined sewer, served by the Coney Island treatment plant. In plain terms, rain and household sewage share the same pipes.

When a hard rain fills those pipes, sewer water can rise through a cellar floor drain or a low toilet. That is Category 3 water. More material comes out, everything it touched gets cleaned and disinfected, and we explain each cut before we make it. Our page on sewer backups goes deeper.

Flood maps are a separate question. That City Planning report found its Flatlands Avenue site outside the flood zone but one block from FEMA's shaded X zone, so the risk can change from one block to the next.