Raritan Valley Waterproofing

Bridgewater basements, from ranches to finished levels

Plan a Bridgewater basement project

Finishing the basement, or fixing a leak first? Either way, tell us which part of the township you are in.

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Raritan Valley Waterproofing puts egress windows into Bridgewater basements and seals the cracks that tend to surface once a basement is finished.

This is a township of owner-occupied single-family houses, and plenty of their owners want the lower level as real living space.

Local record

Housing units
16,975 (ACS 2024) 1
Owner-occupied
84.9% of homes 1
Single-family detached
69.6% of homes 1
Built before 1980
48.3%, about 8,207 homes 1
River edges
Raritan on the south, North Branch on the west 2

Mostly owners, mostly houses

Bridgewater counts 16,975 homes. Of those, 84.9% are owner-occupied and 69.6% are single-family detached, the highest shares among the eight towns on this site (ACS 2024). The stock splits close to evenly by age: 48.3% before 1980, about 8,207 homes, and about one in five, 20.2%, from before 1960.

Owners of houses like these finish basements for an office, a guest room or a teenager. A bedroom below grade needs a way out that meets the code, which is where an egress window comes in, and the town permit and inspection are part of that job.

Three branches of one river

The Raritan runs along Bridgewater's southern border. The North Branch forms the western line with Branchburg, and the South Branch joins it at the township's southwestern corner (Wikipedia). Its named places include Finderne, Bradley Gardens, Martinsville, Green Knoll and Chimney Rock, and the township covers hill and river ground alike.

Ida hit the township hard on September 1, 2021: four people died in vehicles trapped by floodwater in Hillsborough and Bridgewater (Patch). Bridgewater is also on the Somerset County list of towns with Ida-affected repetitive-loss properties (Patch).

Dry it before you finish it

The expensive mistake is drywall over a wall that seeps twice a year. Before a finish, we check for hairline cracks in the poured walls, old tie-rod holes and dampness at the floor joint. Non-structural cracks can be injected from inside in an afternoon. If the walls are dry and the plan includes a bedroom, the egress opening is cut, a drained well goes outside the window, and the window and ladder go in.

Wider cracks or walls that lean are a different matter, and an engineer looks at those before any finish work or sealing goes ahead.

Good fits for Bridgewater basements

Other towns are listed on the service area page.

Sources

  1. ACS 2024 5-year housing estimates, Bridgewater township (Census Reporter)
  2. Bridgewater Township, New Jersey on Wikipedia: river borders, CDPs and localities
  3. Patch, 4 killed in Hillsborough and Bridgewater during Ida flooding
  4. Patch, Borough of Manville release citing the Somerset County OEM repetitive-loss list (Oct 24, 2021)