Basement Water Control — Hoboken, New Jersey 07030
Your Brownstone
Stays Dry.
We install battery and water-powered sump pump backups, plus Wi-Fi flood sensors, in 19th-century Hoboken brownstones — the narrow stairs, the stone footings, the shared party walls. Grid goes out during the storm. Your pump keeps running, and your phone tells you so.
The Problem
Power fails
before the
water does.
Nor’easters, remnant hurricanes, and the high tide on the Hudson all arrive together. A single 115 V pump on a single circuit is a single point of failure.
Written for the block between Ninth and Fourteenth
“Nine inches of water in a garden-level kitchen is not a plumbing event. It is a floor, a boiler, and a winter.”
Hoboken sits in a bowl. Most of the mile square was marsh, and the brownstones along Washington, Bloomfield and Garden were built on footings that happily pass groundwater through old mortar joints. The city pumps hard, but the last twelve vertical inches of your basement are yours alone.
We work only on residential buildings of this type: four to six units, cellar or garden level, cast-iron stack, a pit that somebody dug in 1974 and lined with a bucket. Our survey measures your pit, your static water level, the recovery rate after a heavy rain, and the actual amperage draw of whatever is down there now.
Then we build redundancy: a correctly sized primary pump, a sealed AGM battery backup that runs for hours without the grid, a check-valve arrangement that does not hammer your old pipe, and flood sensors at the pit, the boiler pad, and the washer pan. Everything reports to one app and to a chime loud enough to wake the parlor floor.
No subscriptions we do not need. No drilling into shared masonry without the board’s written sign-off. No crew tracking silt up your stoop — we carry our own runners and we take the debris out with us.
— Dana Reinhardt, founder, master plumber NJ #36BI
In this issue
Four services. Flat quotes, written before we start.
-
01
Battery Backup Sump Systems
A second pump with its own sealed AGM battery, charger and float, plumbed into a dedicated discharge so the primary can fail completely without flooding the cellar. Typically 2,400–3,100 gallons per charge in a Hoboken pit. Installed in one day. From $1,780.
-
02
Wi-Fi Flood Sensor Networks
Three to eight sensors at pit, boiler pad, laundry, and the base of the stoop drain. Push alerts, email to the managing agent, and a 95 dB local chime. Battery life checked annually; no cloud fee for the first two years. From $420.
-
03
Pit Rebuild & Primary Replacement
Old buckets and crumbling liners out, a proper 18 × 24 in. basin with gravel bed and sealed lid in. New cast-iron or stainless primary, quiet check valve, and a discharge line pitched away from the neighbor’s areaway. From $2,250.
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04
Pre-Storm Service Visits
Twice a year, plus a call-ahead before any named storm: float test, amp draw, battery load test, valve clean, sensor check, and a one-page written report for your files or your co-op board. $190 per visit, or $320 annually.
We answer the phone at 3 a.m. during a nor’easter.
Emergency line for existing clients inside the mile square — 34669416418
Trusted by
- Garden Street Owners Assoc.
- Bloomfield Row Co-op
- Castle Point Property Mgmt.
- Willow Terrace Board
- Hudson Tea Realty
- Jefferson Trust Brownstones
Survey your cellar
before the next high tide.
A 45-minute visit, a measured pit, and a written flat quote within two business days. No charge inside Hoboken.