Water damage restoration and cleaning in Paterson, NJ

The emergency this phone rings for here is river water and storm water in a finished basement, and the answer is different from the answer for a burst pipe.

The city has flooded in the record Passaic flood of October 1903, during Hurricane Irene in August 2011 when the water reached levels Paterson had not seen for a hundred years, and again in the remnants of Hurricane Ida in September 2021, when first responders rescued 300 people across the city. The housing it reaches is old. Downtown was rebuilt after the fire of 1902 in four to seven story Beaux Arts blocks that still stand, and the residential wards around them are brick and wood frame with plaster on lath, stacked floors and basements that were finished long after they were built.

River water in a Paterson basement is category 3

Water that has come over the Passaic River bank, or up out of a storm drain on Riverside or in the Northside, is grossly contaminated water under the ANSI IICRC S500 standard. That is decided at the door and it settles the argument about the carpet before it starts. Porous materials the water touched are removed: the carpet, the pad, porous subfloor and the lower band of drywall. The slab, the framing and the joists stay and are cleaned and dried. A homeowner who has run a rented dehumidifier over a category 3 floor for two days has dried contamination into the room.

Plaster and lath hide the water that causes the mold

A moisture meter held against Paterson plaster reads dry long before the cavity behind it is dry, because the lath, the keying behind it and the deep stud bays hold water where nothing on the surface shows it. That is where a mold complaint comes from six weeks after everyone agreed the job went well. The way around it is to mark named monitoring points, take penetrating readings at each of them, and repeat the readings daily until they match an unaffected part of the same wall. The wall is closed on the reading, not on the calendar.

What the first day in a flooded Paterson basement looks like

Standing water is extracted first, then the contents are moved and inventoried, then the category and class are written down and photographed with the meter reading and the wall it came from in the same frame. Only after that does equipment go in. Air movers and dehumidifiers placed over material that should have come out are the single most common reason a job runs twice as long as it needed to.

The Environmental Protection Agency tells homeowners to dry water damaged areas and items within 24 to 48 hours to prevent mold growth, and in this housing stock that window closes faster than it looks. It is the reason a person answers at any hour and a technician is dispatched the same night.

Six wards and a river that behaves differently in each

Paterson is six wards and the water does not treat them alike. The blocks near the river below the falls, through Riverside and around the Northside, take the river itself. Downtown and Sandy Hill take street water when the drainage cannot carry a downpour. The higher ground toward Hillcrest and the Eastside Park Historic District mostly takes losses from inside the house, a supply line, a water heater or an appliance, which are usually category 1 and where much more of the room survives.

The technician who arrives asks which of those it was before deciding anything, because the same wet carpet means three different jobs depending on where the water came from. That question is asked on the phone as well, so the right equipment is on the truck when it arrives.

What is promised before a technician arrives

A person answers at any hour, a technician is dispatched and calls back with an arrival time for your street. He says when he expects to be there, and if the way into that ward is closed he says that on the same call.

No price is published either, because a price quoted before anyone has seen the category, the class and the materials is a guess dressed as a quote. What is promised is that the estimate is written and handed over before any work begins, with no hidden fees.