Basement Waterproofing in Uniontown, PA

KAE Solutions is based in Hopwood, next door to Uniontown, and we serve homes and businesses across the city: basement waterproofing, French drains and sump pumps, foundation and crack repair, crawl spaces, mold removal and demolition. We're locally and family-owned, a Pennsylvania registered home improvement contractor (PA203391), BBB Accredited with an A rating and a member of the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce. Inspections and estimates are free: call (724) 912-8151.

Basement Waterproofing in Uniontown, PA

Uniontown is the Fayette County seat, a city of 9,742 people and 5,550 homes, and its housing is old even for Southwestern Pennsylvania. The Census puts the median Uniontown home at 1942, and 48.5% were built before 1940. More than half, 56.6%, were standing before 1950, and 91% before 1980. Across Fayette County as a whole the median home dates from 1959, and 39.1% predate 1950.

The city is also a place of rentals and shared buildings. Only 46% of Uniontown homes are owner-occupied, and 57.6% are single-family detached houses, so many basements belong to landlords, to the owner of a two-family house, or sit under a building with a business on the ground floor. We do residential and commercial work, and a wet basement under a rental or a storefront gets the same inspection as one under a family home.

The work we do for Uniontown properties:

• Basement waterproofing, interior and exterior, with crack sealing.
• Interior perimeter drains and sump pumps for leaking block and stone walls.
• Foundation repair, including carbon fiber wall straps for bowing walls.
• Crawl space encapsulation and support beams for damp crawl spaces and sagging floors.
• Mold removal after water has sat in a basement or crawl space.
• Gutter lines and yard drainage to keep roof water away from the foundation.
• Demolition and clean-outs, from basement tear-outs to sheds and decks, hauled away.

Old Foundations Under Uniontown Homes

A house from the 1940s or earlier usually sits on concrete block, stone or brick, and its basement was never meant to be living space. Those walls were laid with mortar that wears and washes out with age. Block walls are hollow, so water collects in the cores and seeps out at the base. Stone walls let water through wherever the joints have opened. Many were built with no drain at the footing at all.

In houses that age, the same problems come up again and again: foundation wall cracks, cold joints where the floor meets the wall, basement floor cracks, a damp line along the bottom of the wall, white powder on the block and a musty smell that never quite leaves. The other one is a wall that bows. Wet soil pushing on an old block wall, winter after winter, can bend it inward, and a horizontal crack along the middle of the wall is often the first sign. Our foundation repair page explains how carbon fiber wall straps stabilize a bowing wall, often without large excavation. For major movement, a structural engineer is the person to see first.

Coal Under Uniontown: What DEP's Map Shows

Fayette County sits on the Pittsburgh coal seam, the seam the Pennsylvania Geological Survey's report on the county centers on, and Uniontown is in the middle of its mined ground. On PA DEP's Mine Subsidence Insurance risk map, all of Uniontown city lies in the "Underground Mining Area" layer, and the map's message at the city's center point is "Underground Mining Area - Insurance is recommended". Across Fayette County about 31.7% of the land is in that layer, so the city is far more undermined than the county as a whole.

DEP explains the coverage this way: "Mine subsidence insurance covers losses from earth movement and damage from the collapse of underground coal and clay mines in Pennsylvania." It offers it, DEP says, "because homeowner's insurance usually does not include it", and "Residential coverage of $150,000 costs $41.25 a year." Those are DEP's figures for DEP's own program, and DEP's website is the place to check them and to look up an address on the map.

What it means for your basement: if a crack appears suddenly, or an old one opens up fast, call DEP's mine subsidence program first. We repair cracks and walls and keep water out of basements; we don't diagnose mine subsidence. A slow crack that leaks in heavy rain is a different matter, and that one is ours: see foundation crack repair.

Uniontown's Rain, Snow and Wet Ground

Uniontown has its own NOAA weather station, Uniontown 1 NE, 1.1 miles from the city's center. Its 1991-2020 normals give 44.35 inches of precipitation a year, 11.9 of them in spring and 13.19 in summer, plus 28.1 inches of snow, with measurable precipitation on 161.2 days. The station counts 128.9 days with a low at or below 32°F but only 25.6 days that stay below it, so about 103 days a year freeze and then thaw again.

That water lands on soil that is already holding plenty. In the Fayette County soil survey the water table rises to within 2 feet of the surface on 42.6% of acres at some point in the year, and NRCS rates 88.6% of the county's acres "Very limited" for dwellings with basements. For a 1940s basement in town, that means wet backfill against the walls for long stretches of spring, frost working at the mortar and at any crack that is there, and water pressing up at the joint along the floor.

The fix starts with where the water comes from. Inside, an interior perimeter drain along the footing carries it to a sump pump. Outside, gutters and downspouts that empty against the house are often the first thing to change. Our basement waterproofing and sump pump pages explain each step.

Free Inspections in Uniontown

An inspection is a look at the whole basement, inside and out: the walls and their cracks, the floor joint, the grade, the gutters and where each downspout lets out. We explain what we found and what we'd do about it, and if part of the job is outside our scope, we point you to someone who does that work. Our Google profile shows 5.0 stars from 13 reviews, and we're fully licensed and insured. Protect your home from the ground up: call (724) 912-8151, or see the other towns we serve on our service area page.

Wet Basement in Uniontown?

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

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