Why this call
What is going wrong in a Baltimore house?
Baltimore rowhouses put three floors on one wet wall and a basement under all of them. A failed supply on the third floor is standing water in the basement before the owner sees it on the second. Party walls mean the neighbor’s side of the brick can be wet when your fixture is the one that failed. A porch-front basement that holds water after the valve is closed is the loss, not a stain on the top floor alone.
- A basement already wet from a stack that failed upstairs.
- The second floor still looking dry while the cellar is not.
- A party wall damp beside a rowhouse wet wall.
Say which floor failed and whether the basement is wet. If the ceiling opened because of the roof rather than the stack, say roof. Maryland can schedule that repair on this same call, and it is a different sentence from a supply line.
The houses
What gets wet in Baltimore?
Baltimore’s rowhouses are the housing stock: brick, party walls, basements, and plumbing stacked in a wet wall that serves three floors. A failed supply on the third floor is standing water in the basement before the owner sees it on the second. There are also porch-front houses with basements that hold water even after the pipe is shut. A slab ranch is the exception, not the pattern.
The water
How does water usually get into a Baltimore house?
A burst pipe or a heater with water standing in the house, owner on the line, is the crew call. The harbor, the Jones Falls, and the low streets in a coastal storm are outside water. Basement water needs a sentence of its own: from the stack, or through the foundation. Roof leaks that have opened the ceiling are a separate scheduling question on the same call, because roof repair is also dispatched in Maryland.
The map
Which parts of Baltimore does this page cover?
Federal Hill, Canton, Hampden, Roland Park, Charles Village, and the west side do not leak the same way. Roland Park has houses with more wood and bigger roofs. A rowhouse in Canton has a basement and a party wall. Baltimore County is a different jurisdiction. Towson has its own page.
ZIP codes
Codes covered on this Baltimore page
- 21201
- 21202
- 21203
- 21205
- 21206
- 21209
- 21210
- 21211
- 21212
- 21213
- 21214
- 21215
- 21216
- 21217
- 21218
- 21223
- 21224
- 21229
- 21230
- 21231
- 21233
- 21235
- 21239
- 21240
- 21241
- 21250
- 21251
- 21252
- 21263
- 21264
- 21265
- 21268
- 21270
- 21273
- 21274
- 21275
- 21278
- 21279
- 21280
- 21281
- 21282
- 21283
- 21284
- 21285
- 21287
- 21288
- 21289
- 21290
- 21297
- 21298
A shared ZIP can sit on a city line. Use the city the house is actually in, not only the number on the mail.