Raritan Valley Waterproofing

Bound Brook basement waterproofing behind the levee

Describe the water in your Bound Brook basement

Owner or renter, either is fine. Tell us where it comes in and after what kind of rain.

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Raritan Valley Waterproofing handles basement leaks from the inside in Bound Brook, a borough whose river gauge holds one of the highest crests in the basin.

Since the levee went up, the flood story here has changed. The basement story has not changed as much.

Local record

Housing units
4,707 (ACS 2024) 1
Built before 1960
54.9%, about 2,582 homes 1
Flood stage at the gauge
28 ft; 71 floods since records began in 1882 2
Record crest
42.13 ft in Floyd, 1999 2
Levee design
Built for a 150-year storm, Bound Brook portion complete 4

Floyd set the mark that still stands

The Weather Service gauge below Calco Dam has records back to 1882. Flood stage is 28 feet, and the river has gone over it 71 times. Floyd's crest of 42.13 feet on September 17, 1999 is still the record, and Irene came within a quarter of a foot at 41.90 feet in 2011 (NWS).

During Floyd, 12 feet of water stood on Main Street and three people drowned in the borough. That crest ran 4.5 feet above the previous record anywhere in the basin (NWS Floyd report).

Behind the Green Brook levee

The Bound Brook portion of the Green Brook Flood Control Project is finished: levees, floodwalls, interior drainage and pump stations designed for a 150-year storm (USACE). In Ida, though, a disabled NJ Transit train kept part of the floodgate system from closing, and homes and businesses flooded anyway (New Jersey Globe). Bound Brook is also on the Somerset County list of towns with Ida-affected repetitive-loss properties (Patch).

A levee stops the river from coming over the top. It does nothing about ground that is saturated for days after a storm, which is when old foundation walls start to weep.

Old walls and a lot of rentals

More than half of the borough's 4,707 homes, 54.9%, were built in 1959 or earlier, and 71.8% predate 1980. Only 44.8% are owner-occupied and 41.7% are single-family detached (ACS 2024). In practice that means many two-family houses and older buildings where the person who sees the puddle is not the person who pays for the fix.

If you rent, send the request anyway and loop in your landlord; we can walk the space with both of you. Leak repair at a specific crack or pipe opening is often enough in a house like this. Where water comes up along the whole floor joint, an interior drain channel tied to a sump is the better fix. Water that rises through a floor drain is a sewer backup and a plumber's job, and we will tell you that up front.

Services matched to Bound Brook basements

Other towns are listed on the service area page.

Sources

  1. ACS 2024 5-year housing estimates, Bound Brook borough (Census Reporter)
  2. NWS top 20 crests, Raritan River below Calco Dam at Bound Brook
  3. NWS event report, Hurricane Floyd, Sept 16 to 18, 1999
  4. USACE via DVIDS, Green Brook Flood Control Project, Bound Brook portion (July 25, 2016)
  5. New Jersey Globe, lawmakers want probe of floodgate failure in Bound Brook (Sept 20, 2021)
  6. Patch, Borough of Manville release citing the Somerset County OEM repetitive-loss list (Oct 24, 2021)