Water damage restoration and cleaning in Hoboken, NJ

A tidal surge from Hurricane Sandy submerged around 80 percent of it in October 2012, flooding 1,700 homes and causing more than 100 million dollars of private property damage, and the city has spent the years since engineering its way out of a repeat.

The response was the Rebuild by Design Hudson River project, built around four steps: resist, delay, store and discharge. Levees, berms and bulkheads resist the surge. Bio retention basins, swales and green roofs delay and store the rainfall. Improvements to the stormwater system discharge what is left. The city and the North Hudson Sewerage Authority report that the H1 flood pump in the south west and the H5 in the north west have prevented flooding in about 88 percent of rainstorms since 2016, and ResilienCity Park alone can detain up to two million gallons of stormwater that would otherwise have reached the streets and the basements under them.

Less flooding is not no flooding

Engineering of that quality changes the odds and it does not repeal the weather. A property that has not flooded since the parks opened is protected against the storms the system was designed for, which is a measurable improvement, and no system is a guarantee against a larger storm. The losses that still happen in this city are mostly the ones that were always going to happen anyway: a supply line in a converted loft, a riser in a row house, an overflowing fixture on a third floor, a roof detail on a flat roof in a wind driven storm.

Masonry row houses of three to five stories

The dominant building here is a late nineteenth or early twentieth century masonry row house of three to five stories, often subdivided into apartments, alongside converted factory lofts. That construction is class 4 material under the ANSI IICRC S500 standard, because masonry and plaster hold water inside the assembly and release it slowly. Water from an upper floor travels down through the party walls and the joist ends, so the unit that reports a ceiling stain is frequently two floors below the leak and one household along from it.

Mapping a loss in a subdivided row house

The extent is mapped before any equipment is placed, because a drying plan built around the flat that called leaves wet joist ends and party wall cavities elsewhere in the building. Readings are taken on both faces of a shared wall where access allows, and where access is refused that is written on the file as a limitation.

Each affected flat then gets its own photographs taken before anything is moved, its own named monitoring points and its own dated daily readings, so the owner, each tenant and each carrier can read the part that concerns them. The equipment leaves when the wet readings match a control point in an unaffected part of the same building.

Converted lofts and open plans

A converted factory loft is a different drying problem from a row house apartment. Large open volumes, heavy timber or concrete structure and exposed brick mean the air moves easily but the material holds water for a long time, and dehumidification capacity is usually what governs the schedule.

Where a floating or engineered floor has been laid over the original structure, that assembly traps water underneath and reads dry on top. It is opened and measured, because a floor that appears fine on day two is the commonest source of a later mold complaint in this building type.

Mold, and what is put in writing

The Environmental Protection Agency asks for water damaged areas and items to be dried within 24 to 48 hours to prevent mold growth. In masonry the surface reads dry well before the assembly is, which is how a wall passes a hand test and fails a meter.

Remediation follows ANSI IICRC S520 and names the condition found: normal fungal ecology, settled spores and fragments, or actual growth. Containment, negative air pressure and HEPA filtration keep the work out of shared stairwells. Post remediation verification is provided in writing, and no state mold license is claimed because New Jersey issues none. Products used in occupied apartments are EPA registered and described as safe around pets and children, the estimate is free and written before work begins with no hidden fees, and the business is licensed and insured and family owned since 2010.