Water at the floor line after a hard rain, a crack in the back wall that keeps opening, front steps pulling away from the house. From Canton to Hampden we handle foundation repair, basement waterproofing and basement wall repair, and the inspection is free.
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WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Baltimore sits on a seam. West of it the ground is rock and the trouble is water running downhill. East of it the ground is sand and silt and the trouble is the house settling into it. Both show up down the basement.
It is coming in low
After heavy rain it shows up where the floor meets the wall and spreads out from there. That joint is the easiest way in.
Something is pushing
A line running sideways along the wall, sometimes stepping down at one end. Hairline is common here. Wide enough to see through is not.
Pressure from the soil side
One course of block has moved further in than the ones above and below. That is saturated ground behind a buried wall, and it goes first.
The joints are failing
On the older rows the brick outlasts the mortar. Once the joints go soft the wall stops working as one piece and starts to move.
Water is moving through the wall
The chalky bloom is salt left behind as water passes through the block and dries on the inside face. It marks the path water is taking.
The floor moves on its own
A line running across the concrete, often damp along it after rain. The floor was poured separately from the walls, so it can settle while they stay put.
An old house in Baltimore has settled before, and a lot of what turns up in the basement is a century of that showing. The question is whether the movement has stopped. Mortar that has been soft for decades is one thing. A wall that was flat last year and is not now is another. If you cannot tell which of those you are looking at, that is exactly what the free inspection is for.
From a block wall bowing in under the stairs, to mortar you can rake out of an old row with a finger, to water across the basement floor after every heavy rain, these are the calls we get across Baltimore. Tap any service to see what is involved.
Stops a house that has settled from dropping further, brings it back toward level, and closes the cracks the movement opened up.
Learn moreWhich half of the city you are in decides what we find. On the Coastal Plain side, around Canton, the house is sitting on sand and silt that keeps compressing under it, and the settlement is slow and even until it is not.
Foundation repair starts by working out where the support stopped. Underpinning is the usual answer on a row house: the footing is carried down to material that will actually hold the weight, section by section, so the wall above is never unsupported. On a detached house with a deeper failure, piers do the same job from a single point. From there the structure is brought back toward level gradually, so plaster and brick come with it instead of tearing. Foundation settlement repair is measured work rather than one lift.
None of it addresses why the ground gave way in the first place. If water is still arriving in the same place it will work on the next stretch of footing along, which is why the drainage gets looked at in the same visit. In Federal Hill that has meant underpinning down one side and a drain along the other. The inspection is free.
Keeps water off the basement floor by catching it inside the wall and sending it to a pump before it reaches the room.
Learn moreIn Hampden the ground is Piedmont rock under clay, and rain that lands uphill has nowhere to soak away. It travels along the top of the rock until it meets the back of somebody's basement, which is why the same wall is wet every storm and the rest of the house is fine.
Basement waterproofing gives that water somewhere better to go. A channel is cut at the base of the wall, drain tile is bedded in stone below the slab, and it all ties into a pit where a pump lifts it clear of the house. Interior basement drainage suits a wall that is weeping through the block rather than one split open. Where the wall itself is the leak, the outside face gets excavated and a membrane goes on so water never reaches the masonry at all.
It will not straighten a wall that has already moved, and it does not fix a downspout emptying at the corner. Those are separate jobs and we will say so. In Remington the gutters turned out to be most of the answer, and someone will tell you that at no charge.
Intercepts water moving through the yard and routes it away, so it stops arriving at the foundation after every storm.
Learn moreRow houses leave very little ground to work with, so what there is has to do the job properly. A narrow rear yard in Canton that falls back toward the house delivers everything off the roof and the alley straight to the foundation.
A french drain installation is a trench, a bed of washed stone and perforated pipe wrapped so fine material cannot silt it up, laid on a fall that keeps water moving. It collects what is travelling through the top of the ground and takes it out to a place where it can do no harm. Exterior yard drainage is the cheapest place to solve a water problem because it is the furthest upstream you can get to it. Where the fall is shallow the trench deepens as it runs, since a pipe that flattens out holds water instead of carrying it.
A drain will not dry a basement that is taking water through the wall itself, and it does nothing about a downspout discharging inside the trench line. Both get handled together. In Hampden the regrading mattered as much as the pipe. The visit to work out which you need costs nothing.
Holds a bowing or cracked basement wall against the load that is pushing on it, and straightens it back where there is room to.
Learn moreA wall that has come in along one course is carrying more than it was built to. On the older rows in Butchers Hill the basement wall is often brick laid over stone, put up long before anybody was thinking about the pressure of wet ground behind it.
Basement wall repair begins with deciding whether the wall can be held where it is or has to come back. Carbon fibre straps bonded across the face stop further movement and finish flat enough to paint over. Steel beams anchored at the footing and the joists do the same on a wall that has gone further, and can be tightened over time to recover some of the deflection. Bowing wall reinforcement is chosen by how much movement is already there, not by preference. Straps are spaced by the height of the wall and what it is built from, not on a standard interval, and they run from the footing right up to the framing above.
Bracing manages the wall honestly, but the load behind it stays until the water is dealt with, so drainage usually goes in alongside. In Locust Point that pairing is what stopped it. Having yours looked at costs you nothing.
Seals cracks through the full depth of the wall rather than skimming the surface, and reinforces block walls so they stop opening.
Learn moreNot every crack is doing anything. A thin vertical line in a poured wall in Riverside is usually shrinkage left from the concrete setting, and it may weep after a storm without ever moving again.
Foundation crack repair treats those by injecting resin under pressure so the material travels the full depth and bonds both faces together, instead of sitting in the first half inch the way a surface patch does. Block and brick walls work differently: the crack follows the joints, so the repair is closing it and adding reinforcement across it so the wall stops flexing at that line. On a leaking crack the injection is taken right through to the outside face, leaving no void for water to sit in and freeze. On brick the pointing around the repair usually gets made good at the same time, since a sound patch beside failing joints does not last long.
What injection cannot do is hold a wall still being pushed, or close a crack that keeps widening because the footing under it is dropping. Those need the movement stopped first. In Patterson Park we have turned crack work down for exactly that reason. The inspection is free.
Raises sunken walkways, steps and drives back to level by filling the void underneath, without tearing out the concrete you already have.
Learn moreFront steps and pavement matter more here than in most cities, because on a row house they are what everybody walks up and what the water runs across on its way to the house. In Highlandtown a walk that has tipped back toward the building is feeding the basement every time it rains.
Concrete leveling lifts them without replacement. Small holes are drilled through the slab and material is pumped underneath, filling the void first and then raising the concrete in stages while it is watched with a level. Polyurethane foam is light and sets within minutes, so a walk can be used the same day. Slab jacking costs a fraction of tearing out and pouring new, and it keeps the concrete that is already there. Holes are patched flush, so what is left is a line of dots rather than an obvious repair.
It will not save a slab broken into pieces or crumbling from the surface down, and it does not stop the washout that dropped it. In Mount Vernon the downspout came first. The inspection is free. A slab that has dropped once will drop again if the water that undermined it keeps arriving in the same place.
Queen Foundation Repair handles the two things that go wrong under a Baltimore house: water arriving where it should not, and ground that will not hold the weight above it. We are a leading provider of foundation work across the city, covering foundation repair, basement waterproofing, basement wall repair and foundation crack repair.
Most of what we get called to started small. A damp line along the floor where the wall meets it, a crack in the block you could once cover with a thumb, mortar that has started coming out of the joints by hand. Left alone those get dearer, because the water behind them keeps arriving.
So we look before we quote. From Canton across to Hampden, someone comes out, goes over the property inside and down the basement, and tells you plainly what is happening and what putting it right involves. The price is in writing before work starts. If it is cosmetic, we will say so rather than sell you a repair you do not need.
Half the houses here are rows, which means a party wall usually sits on a footing shared with next door. You can see everything Queen Foundation Repair does across Maryland. Licensed and insured, the warranty moves with the house if you sell, and the estimate is free.
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WHAT YOU GET
We pick up quickly and get out to the property fast, so you're not waiting weeks to learn what's wrong and what it costs.
No charge for us to come out, work out what's happening, and lay out what the fix involves. You know where you stand before deciding.
Licensed, with full liability and workers' comp cover, so the work meets code and your property is protected if anything goes wrong.
Every repair carries a written warranty that passes to the next owner, so it protects the value of the house if you sell.
A clear written price before anything starts. No vague ballpark, and nothing new appearing once a crew is already on the job.
From the old brick and stone basements in Canton to the hillside walls up in Hampden, we are down these basements every week.
COMMON QUESTIONS
The questions we get asked most in Baltimore, from Canton over to Hampden, and the honest answers to them. If yours is not on the list, it is worth asking when someone comes out to look.
What It Costs
It depends entirely on what is wrong. A single crack injected in a poured wall runs a few hundred dollars. Underpinning a settled section of a row house runs into the low thousands, and a full side of the house well beyond that. Nobody can price it honestly over the phone, which is why somebody comes out and looks first, and the number goes in writing before any work begins. Two houses on the same block can differ by a factor of five.
Interior drainage is generally priced by the running foot of wall, so a single wet wall costs a fraction of doing the whole perimeter. A pump and pit adds to it. Digging the outside face is the more expensive route and is only worth it when the wall itself is the leak rather than the joint at the floor.
For a typical Baltimore row house doing one or two walls, most jobs land somewhere between about three and eight thousand dollars, and a full perimeter with a pump above that. The size of the basement matters less than how many walls are actually taking water. You get told which ones yours are before anyone quotes a number.
Underpinning
It is the more involved end of foundation work, so yes, more than a crack repair. But it is done in sections rather than all at once, and on a row house only the failing part usually needs it. What makes it expensive is leaving it: a footing that keeps dropping takes the wall, the floors and eventually the party wall with it. On a shared wall the cost of waiting climbs faster still, because the neighbor's side ends up involved.
Longer than most of what sits on top of it. The point of underpinning is to move the weight of the house off ground that moved and onto material that will not, so once the load is transferred the settlement stops. What can still fail afterwards is the drainage around it, which is why the water side gets dealt with in the same plan rather than later. Done properly it does not need revisiting, and the written warranty transfers with the house.
No, and this is the one place we will be blunt about it. Underpinning means removing ground from beneath a wall that is holding your house up, in sections, in a specific order, with the load carried at every stage. Getting the sequence wrong drops the wall. It is also permitted work here. This is not a job to learn on. What you can reasonably do yourself is the drainage above ground, and that often matters more than people expect.
Insurance
Usually not. A standard policy excludes earth movement and gradual water, which covers most of what causes foundation trouble. What is covered is sudden accidental discharge, so a supply line that bursts under the slab has a real claim path. Read your own policy rather than assuming either way.
Not as a rule. Insurers treat waterproofing as maintenance rather than damage, because the water arrived gradually rather than in one event. If a burst pipe flooded the basement, the damage from that may be claimable even though the waterproofing itself is not.
Groundwater and seepage through a wall are excluded on a standard policy. A sewer or drain backup is usually available as an endorsement and is worth having in an older neighborhood. Surface flooding needs separate flood cover. Maryland has no state program that fills these gaps, so the policy you hold is the whole answer.
Is It Worth Doing
If the basement is finished, or you want it to be, it pays for itself the first wet spring. If it is bare storage and takes a little water twice a year, a sump and better gutters may be all you need. We would rather tell you that than sell a full perimeter system to somebody who does not need one. The other half of the answer is what you want the room for, because a dry basement in a row house is real floor space.
If the footing is still moving, yes, because everything above it moves with it and the bill grows the whole time. If the settlement is historic and has not changed in years, no. The test we use is whether it has moved recently, not whether it looks alarming.
Not all, and where you are in the city has a lot to do with it. On the west and north side the ground is rock under clay, so water runs along the top of it and arrives at whichever basement is in the way. Toward the harbor it is sand and silt, which drains better but settles more. Neither guarantees a wet basement, but the two sides fail in different ways and on different timescales, and the fix differs with them.
Why It Happens in Baltimore
Because water arrives from uphill, not from directly below. If their ground sheds toward you, or their downspout empties near your wall, you take their water as well as your own. On a row of houses that difference can be one property wide.
It does. Baltimore sits on the line where hard Piedmont rock to the west meets the sand and silt of the coastal plain to the east. Up around Hampden the problem is usually water travelling downhill and finding a wall. Down toward Canton it is more often the ground itself compressing under the footing.
Usually yes. A party wall normally sits on a single footing carried by both houses, so movement on one side shows up on the other. It also means access to that wall may run through next door. We deal with this constantly and it is a conversation worth having early rather than mid-job.
Practical and Local
Ask what they think is causing it, not just what they want to install. Anyone who quotes before looking underneath, or gives the same answer to every house on the street, is selling a product rather than diagnosing a problem. Get the price in writing and check the warranty transfers.
Generally yes, and which office issues it depends on the address. Baltimore City permits separately from Baltimore County, and plenty of addresses with a Baltimore mailing address are actually in the county. Structural work and cutting an opening in a foundation wall are permitted either way.
Yes, and on a row house it matters more than people expect. A front walk or set of steps that has tipped back toward the building sends water straight to the foundation every time it rains. Sunken slabs get lifted from underneath rather than torn out, which is cheaper and keeps the concrete you have.
WHERE WE WORK
We cover the whole Baltimore area, city and county both, not just the addresses inside the city line. That takes in the old brick and stone basements on the rows around Canton, the hillside walls up through Hampden, and the newer ground out toward the water. It runs past the beltway wherever a house needs looking at.
ZIP CODES WE COVER
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