Basement Waterproofing in Greensburg, PA

KAE Solutions serves homeowners and property owners in Greensburg, PA, the Westmoreland County seat, from our base in Hopwood, Fayette County. Greensburg is part of the Southwestern Pennsylvania area we cover. We do basement waterproofing, interior and exterior French drains, sump pumps, foundation and crack repair, crawl space work, mold removal and demolition, for houses and for commercial buildings. The inspection and the estimate are free: call (724) 912-8151.

Basement Waterproofing in Greensburg, PA

Your basement doesn't have to flood for it to have a water problem. It usually starts smaller: a musty smell that never clears, a damp patch low on a wall, paint peeling off the block, mold spots on a stored box, a dehumidifier that fills up every day. Each of those means water is moving through the foundation, even if it never pools on the floor.

Where it comes through is much the same from house to house. Foundation wall cracks are the obvious place. The cold joint is less obvious: the floor slab and the walls were poured at different times, so a seam runs all the way around the basement where they meet, and water under pressure rises through it. Cracks in the basement floor let ground water up from below. Where a garage sits at basement level, a worn seal at the bottom of the garage door lets rain run straight in.

What we usually do about each of them:

• Water at the cold joint or along the base of a wall: an interior drain that carries it to a sump pump.
• One leaking crack in a poured wall: crack repair, sealed from the inside.
• Water pressing on a whole wall from outside: exterior waterproofing and an exterior drain at the footing.
• Water pooling against the house: gutter lines, downspout extensions and grading.
• Damp, musty air with no visible leak: finding the moisture source first, then mold removal where mold has grown.

Our basement waterproofing page goes through interior and exterior systems in more detail.

Greensburg's Homes and Rental Buildings

Greensburg is the largest town on our list, with 14,741 people and 7,262 housing units. The Census puts its median home at 1957: 31.6% of homes were built before 1940, 40.7% before 1950 and 76.5% before 1980. The mix differs from the boroughs around it. Only 55.7% of Greensburg's homes are single-family detached houses and 55% are owner-occupied, so many are attached houses, multi-family buildings and rentals.

For a landlord, a wet basement is also a tenant's problem: stored belongings on a damp floor, a furnace or water heater sitting in water after a storm, a smell that drifts upstairs. We work on residential and commercial properties, and we can walk a building with whoever looks after it.

The older houses in town mostly stand on stone, brick or concrete block, and the postwar ones on block or poured concrete. All of them are old enough that the original dampproofing on the outside of the walls, usually a coat of tar, has worn thin, and any clay drain tile at the footing may have stopped carrying water years ago.

Coal Under Greensburg: What DEP's Map Shows

Nearly all of Greensburg sits over coal. On PA DEP's Mine Subsidence Insurance risk map, about 69.9% of the city lies in the "Underground Mining Area" and another 29.2% in "Coal Exists - Possibly Mined", which leaves about 1% in neither. At the city's Census center point the map reads "Underground Mining Area - Insurance is recommended". Across Westmoreland County as a whole, about 28.9% of the land is in the underground mining layer.

DEP is plain about the uncertainty: "It is difficult to predict if or when an abandoned mine will fail." It also notes: "Most collapses develop where the cover is less than 50 feet." The cover is the depth of rock and soil between the coal seam and the surface. You can look up your own address on DEP's risk map.

Honest, straightforward advice. No pressure, no scare tactics. Living over a mine does not make every crack a mine problem. Most basement cracks come from concrete shrinking as it cured, from frost and from water pressure, and they open slowly. Cracks that appear all at once, a floor that drops or a wall that moves within weeks are different: call DEP's mine subsidence program first. We repair cracks and walls, and we don't diagnose mine subsidence. For major movement, a structural engineer is the person to assess the house before any foundation repair starts.

High Water Tables and Pennsylvania's Code

Ground water around Greensburg comes close to the surface. In the NRCS soil survey for Westmoreland County, the water table rises to within 2 ft of the surface at its shallowest point in the year on 45.5% of soil acres, and to within about 3.3 ft on 61.6%. A basement floor sits deeper than that, so for part of the year many basements are below the water table, with water pressing on the walls and up under the slab.

Pennsylvania's building code addresses this directly. It requires that "In areas where a high water table or other severe soil-water conditions are known to exist, exterior foundation walls ... shall be waterproofed", not only dampproofed. On an existing house there are two ways to get there. From outside, we dig along the wall, clean and repair it, apply waterproofing and lay a drain at the footing. From inside, a drain runs under the edge of the floor along the walls and carries the water to a sump pump that pushes it out of the house. Inside work leaves the yard alone and can be done in any season. Outside work stops the water before it reaches the wall.

Rain, Snowmelt and Sump Pumps in Greensburg

The nearest full NOAA station to Greensburg is at Mount Pleasant, 7.0 miles away. Its 1991-2020 normals count 150.2 days a year with at least 0.01 inch of precipitation, 11.28 inches in March, April and May, and 29.8 inches of snow. Spring is when snowmelt and rain arrive together and the ground is at its wettest, and it is when an undersized or failing sump pump shows itself.

A sump pump is only one part of the system. It needs a pit deep enough to collect the water, a check valve so the water doesn't fall back into the pit, and a discharge line long enough that the water doesn't soak straight back down to the foundation. Where part of a house has a dirt floor or a crawl space, a sealed vapor barrier keeps ground moisture out of the framing, and our crawl space encapsulation page explains how. Our other towns are on the service area page. Call (724) 912-8151 to book a free inspection.

Damp Basement in Greensburg?

Call (724) 912-8151 for a free estimate.

Get a Free Estimate

Get a Free Estimate