Foundation Repair in Pittsburgh, PA

Water in the basement every time it rains?

You are not alone. It is the most common call from Pittsburgh homeowners. Water comes in where the wall meets the floor. A crack starts to drip. The carpet smells like mold after a storm. Or you go down after a big rain and find a puddle by the floor drain.

Water is only half of it. Old Pittsburgh basements also crack, lean and settle. Here is what people tell us when they call:

• "There is water on the basement floor after it rains."
• "My block wall has a crack that runs sideways along the middle."
• "The wall is pushing in. I can see it bulge."
• "There is a stair-step crack in the brick or block."
• "The floor upstairs slopes and the doors stick."
• "Sewage came up the floor drain in the last storm."
• "A home inspector flagged the foundation and we close in three weeks."

If any of these sound like your house, a free inspection will tell you what is going on and what it will take to fix it.

Why foundations crack and leak in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is a hard place to be a foundation. Four things work against your basement here.

Steep hills and slippery clay. Much of Pittsburgh is built on steep slopes cut by the three rivers. Under many of those hills is a layer called the Pittsburgh red beds. It is high in clay. When it gets soaked, it turns slick and can slide. State maps rank the Pittsburgh area as the most landslide-prone part of Pennsylvania. In 2018, more than 200 landslides hit Pittsburgh and the counties around it, and the city spent about $12 million on cleanup. Soil that creeps downhill pushes on the uphill wall of a basement, and it can pull on the downhill side.

A lot of rain. 2018 was the wettest year on record in Pittsburgh, at 57.83 inches. State data also shows more heavy rain events in recent years than in the 1980s. Wet soil is heavy soil. It presses on basement walls and finds every crack.

Freeze and thaw. Pittsburgh winters swing above and below freezing again and again. Water in the soil freezes, grows, and pushes on the wall. Then it thaws and does it again. That cycle opens small cracks over the years and pushes block walls in.

Old houses and old sewers. About half of the homes in the city were built before 1940. Many sit on block, brick or stone walls that were never waterproofed. Most of the city also has combined sewers, where storm water and waste share one pipe. In a heavy storm those pipes can fill up and back up into basements.

There is one more Pittsburgh problem most people do not know about: old coal mines. Parts of Allegheny County sit over abandoned mines. When the ground over a mine drops, it can crack foundations. In 2023, at least seven homes in Lincoln Place had foundation cracks after a mine collapse under the neighborhood.

What it costs

Here are typical ranges from published cost guides for the Pittsburgh area. They are not quotes.

Your price depends on your house, the soil and what the inspection finds. See the full Pittsburgh foundation repair cost guide for more detail. You get your exact price in writing before any work starts. No surprises.

Where we help

We connect homeowners across Pittsburgh and Allegheny County with local crews, from hillside streets in Mount Washington and Spring Hill to river towns like Millvale and Hays, and suburbs like Bethel Park, Dormont, Shaler, Penn Hills and Moon Township. See all service areas.