Water Damage Restoration in Trenton, NJ

Three gauges publish impact statements that name this city, and comparing their records is the most useful thing on this page, because each one's worst day is a different day.

The Assunpink Creek gauge is the flashy one — a small inland stream with a scale running from action at 7 feet to major at 11. Its lowest statement, at 6.5 feet, reads: "Assunpink Park floods. George Page Park floods. Minor street flooding in Trenton." Its highest, at 15 feet, is five words long: "The Trenton Transit Center is flooded." Both are quoted exactly as published. That gauge keeps 32 crests going back to 1971, and its record is 15.12 feet on 28 August 2011 — which means the top statement on the ladder has been reached exactly once, by an inch and a half. Between those two rungs sit statements about Mulberry Street at 9 and 10 feet and North Olden Avenue at 11.

Now look at that same gauge across the three years that produced half this city's claims. 6 February 2004: 8.75 feet. 2 April 2005: 8.62 feet. And 2006 does not appear in its crest list at all. Both of the 2004 and 2005 readings are barely at minor flood stage, and neither is in its top twenty. That is the check that matters: the run of years that produced 536 claims is the Delaware's doing, and the creek that floods the transit centre had almost nothing to do with it.

On the Delaware gauge itself the two statements that concern this city are lower down its long ladder. At 18.5 feet: "PA Route 32 South at East College Avenue in Yardley borough begins to flood. Water begins to enter Level 1 of the parking garage at the State Capital Building. Sections of Stacey Park in Trenton are closed." At 20 feet, where minor flooding begins: "Houses on Brown Street in Yardley begin to take on water. Houses on Afton Avenue also take on water. Southbound lanes are closed along stretches of Route 29 in Trenton. Route 32 North is closed in Yardley borough. River Road (Route 32), north of Woodside Road and south of Mt. Eyre Road, in Lower Makefield Township, begins to flood."

Twenty-five of that gauge's 33 crests have reached 18.5 feet and twenty-three have reached 20, so the parking garage and the Route 29 closures are routine rather than exceptional. Its top rung, at 25 feet, has been reached five times: 1903, 1904, 1955, 2005 and 2006. Its record is 30.6 feet on 8 March 1904 — five and a half feet above the highest reading it has a sentence for. And Hurricane Irene, the storm most of New Jersey measures floods against, crested here at 20.49 feet: just into minor.

Eight of that gauge's ten statements, incidentally, are about Yardley borough and Lower Makefield Township on the Pennsylvania bank, which is a reminder that a gauge's text is written for the whole reach and not for one side of the river.

One figure decides most of the work here. Of the 819 Trenton claims that record a basement code, 818 are on something below grade — 582 unfinished, 213 finished, 23 a subgrade crawlspace. Exactly one claim in the whole coded file is on a building with no below-grade space at all. That is the highest coded below-grade share of any town in this batch, and it means that in this city the flood job is almost always a basement job.

Put that beside the age of the stock and the sequence of the work is set before anybody arrives. 79.3 percent of Trenton's 34,513 housing units were built before 1980, and 13,155 of them — 38.1 percent — date from 1939 or earlier, which is the highest prewar share of the six towns in this batch. On a building that age the tear-out has a regulated question in front of it before it has a carpentry question: lead paint rules attach to housing built before 1978, and flooring installed up to 1980 is presumed to contain asbestos until somebody establishes otherwise, which is licensed work not on our list. Which federal and state rules apply and exactly where the emergency exception stops is identical in every New Jersey municipality and is written out in full on the hub.

What is local is the arithmetic of doing it more than once. On these blocks the record says a rebuild has about a one-in-two chance of being tested again inside a few years, so the questions worth answering with the wall already open are about the next flood rather than this one. What is the lowest height at which a finish stops being written off every time? Is what goes on the wall under it able to survive a soaking, or does it have to be stripped back on each occasion? Can the heating plant, the water heater and the panel come up off the floor? On a rowhouse with party walls there is usually only one route in and out of the wet volume, which changes what sequencing is even possible and is worth settling at the estimate rather than mid-job.

Two more things about this city's record that bear on the decision. Mercer County's flood map has an effective date of 20 July 2016 — the oldest effective map of any county this line covers — so the zone lines anyone quotes you against here were last revised a decade ago. And FEMA's mitigation file holds 31 Trenton properties, 22 of them bought and demolished, with program years running 1998 to 2010: every one of them predates both 2011 and 2021. There is no recent public programme here to wait for. Ask us for a written estimate before anything is opened, and say when you call which water reached you — the river, the creek or a drain — because on this housing stock it changes what we expect to find. Replacing the sash and frames in a below-grade opening is glazing work rather than restoration, and our Trenton windows and glass page sets it out.