These are the questions homeowners in Newport, Middletown, Portsmouth, Jamestown, and the East Bay ask most when they call about water in an old house. Each one leads with the answer.
Stay off the cellar stairs if the panel is down there and the water is near it. Cut the power from a dry spot if you can. Photograph the water line on the stone, then move anything you can carry off the ground floor. Do not run the furnace or a fan across salt water. Then call and say what you see.
It does. Harbor and bay water carries salt, fuel, and whatever was in the storm drains, so porous material it touched usually comes out instead of drying in place, and the salt left behind keeps pulling moisture into wood and plaster. Storm surge and coastal flood cleanup treats it as contaminated water from the first hour.
Common, and not harmless. A rubble fieldstone cellar with lime mortar lets groundwater through the joints on every wet spring tide, and the sill and joists above it stay damp year round. Stone cellar flooding cleanup gets the water out, meters the timbers overhead, and tells you whether the cellar dries between springs.
It can, and a wet horsehair plaster ceiling is heavy. Keep people out from under it, put a bucket below the low spot, and do not poke it. Ceiling water damage repair opens the ceiling at the low point so the cavity can drain and dry, then finds where the water came from before anyone patches it.
Most likely an ice dam. Snow melts over a warm attic, refreezes at the cold eave, and the pooled meltwater backs up under the slates and down inside the wall. Roof leak and ice dam water damage work dries the attic, the ceiling, and the wall the water ran down, and the slate itself may need nothing.
A plumber and the cleanup provider, and both can be on the way at once. Close the main shutoff at the front foundation wall and keep it closed until the plumber finds the split, since a second frozen section can let go as the wall warms. Frozen pipe cleanup dries the wall, the floor, and the room below.
Not below the surface. Wide pine boards, the subfloor under them, the sill, and the bottom of the plaster hold water for weeks, and salt air slows everything down. Structural drying runs equipment against daily readings until those materials come back to the same numbers as a dry wall upstairs.
It changes the exterior work. Drying and interior repairs need no historic review, but a new door, new clapboards, or a changed bulkhead after a flood needs a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic District Commission before the work starts. The provider handles the inside, and the home page links to the commission.
It turns on how the water got in and on the wording of your own policy, which this site has not read. A burst pipe is often treated as sudden damage. Water from the harbor or bay is flood, which is a separate policy, and groundwater through a stone wall is often excluded from both. Have the provider hand you photos, meter readings, and a written scope to give your adjuster.
Call before you turn the heat up. A pipe that froze in an empty house leaks when it thaws, and a second section can split as the house warms. Close the main, photograph everything, and say how long the house sat empty and at what thermostat setting when you call, since the adjuster will ask the same questions.
Only for the permit desk. Portsmouth, Barrington, and every other town here runs its own building office, and the coastal setback rules come from the state Coastal Resources Management Council. The drying is the same job, and providers cross the bridges every week.
Nobody can, and this site does not quote prices at all; a provider needs readings from inside the house before naming a figure. How much water came in, whether it was salt or fresh, how long it sat, and how old the materials are all set the scope. Insist on a written scope before the first board comes up.
Providers represent their own registration and insurance. Residential contractors in Rhode Island register with the state Contractors' Registration and Licensing Board, and the About page has the lookup link. Ask them for a certificate of insurance while you have them on the phone.
Call (401) 560-5802. Say whether the water is salt or fresh, which floor is wet, whether the cellar walls are stone, whether the main is closed, and whether the water has stopped.