The floor is wet, the water is more than a puddle, and the first question has nothing to do with a mop. Did the water come out of the ground, or out of a drain? Pittsburgh basement flooding can arrive both ways, sometimes during the same storm.
Looking at the water will not settle it. This post covers where water gets in, what public sources admit about telling the origins apart, and what to assume meanwhile.
Pittsburgh Water's flood preparedness page sorts flooding into types. Three of them can reach a basement:
Only the third is sewage by definition, though the first two do not get a clean bill of health.
Begin with where water first showed itself. A gap in the foundation, a door or a window points to stormwater that found a way in.
Water appearing inside the plumbing is another matter. A flood handbook from the City and County of Denver and its drainage district, written about a different city but describing the typical house with a basement, says the sanitary sewer line serves toilet waste, laundry tubs and the basement floor drain, while downspouts, footing drains and sump pumps deal with clean stormwater and groundwater. By that description, water rising from a toilet, a laundry tub or the floor drain is arriving on the sanitary side. That source describes the floor drain as the lowest way into the house's sanitary plumbing. For that drain's habits, see what a Pittsburgh floor drain is telling you.
The handbook concedes that when a basement is full of water, it is hard to tell how it got in. The CDC goes further: the exact contents of floodwater at any given moment are unknown, and human and livestock waste can be among them. Pittsburgh Water's flood page lists oil, gasoline and sewage as possible contaminants.
Across roughly three quarters of the city, Pittsburgh Water says, one set of underground pipes carries both sewage and stormwater. In a downpour, the rainwater in a basement may have come up through a pipe that also carries sewage, a route described in what heavy rain does to those shared pipes.
Sewage Cleanup Crew, LLC is a residential sewage cleanup crew. If the water in a Pittsburgh basement includes sewage — or you cannot tell yet and need cleanup handled as sewage until someone proves otherwise — call (855) 433-1072 or send details through Contact Us. We still want the utility report when a main may be involved; that call and ours do different jobs. Pittsburgh Water's steps for a confirmed backup are collected in the opening-hour guide for a Pittsburgh sewage backup.
Sewage in the house right now?
Call our crew and tell us what you're seeing.
