Water damage restoration in Plainfield, New Jersey
Plainfield has one of the larger concentrations of Victorian housing in the state, and those houses were not built with the plumbing they now carry.
What makes Plainfield different
The historic districts hold homes from the 1870s through the 1910s, most of which have been re-plumbed at least twice and re-wired more often than that. Original stone foundations, later concrete patches, and drainage that was designed for a lot with far less impervious surface than it has today. Green Brook has flooded the low sections more than once. Elsewhere in the city the pattern is the ordinary one: a line fails, water runs downward until something stops it, and the question becomes how long it ran before anyone opened the basement door.
Covering Van Wyck Brooks Historic District, Sleepy Hollow, Netherwood, West End and the rest of Plainfield.
The first hour matters more than the next ten
Materials that are wet for a few hours usually recover. Materials that stay wet overnight often do not. Drywall wicks moisture upward within minutes, carpet padding holds many times its weight in water and passes it into the subfloor, and a closed basement in summer reaches the humidity where growth begins within a couple of days.
If the water is anywhere near a panel, a boiler, a furnace or an outlet — and in most Union County basements the panel is on the wall the water reaches first — treat the room as unsafe until the circuit is off from a dry location.
What usually causes it here
What the work involves
Water damage often becomes a mold question
An assembly that was wet and never properly dried keeps moisture out of sight — behind panelling, under flooring, inside a wall cavity. That is why a basement that took water during a storm and was dried with a couple of fans is worth looking at again months later.