Basement Waterproofing in Cheektowaga, NY

The soil that carries the town's name

The Soil Survey of Erie County maps a series called Cheektowaga fine sandy loam, and its description is a fair summary of the town: a level to nearly level soil, poorly drained and very poorly drained, that formed in sandy sediments 20 to 40 inches deep over sediments high in clay, in depressional areas on lake plains. Water moves quickly through the sand, hits the clay, and stops. The survey says the larger areas of this soil are in the northern part of the county, which is where Cheektowaga sits.

Around those depressions the town is mapped largely as Urban land in complex with Niagara and Odessa soils, the silty and clayey lake-bottom deposits that carry a seasonal high water table in the upper subsoil from December through May. Scajaquada Creek and Cayuga Creek cross the town on their way west, and the survey notes that streams north of the old glacial beach line meander across the flat lake plain with low gradients and swampy margins. Cheektowaga does not shed water; it stores it.

Post-war block houses, sixty years on

The 2024 ACS one-year estimate for the Cheektowaga census-designated place counts about 34,800 housing units. Roughly a quarter were built in the 1950s and nearly another quarter in the 1960s, with about 17 percent from the 1970s and 12 percent from the 1940s. Fewer than one in ten predate 1940. This is a town of Cape Cods, ranches and small colonials on hollow concrete block foundations, built fast to house the workers of the plants and the airport, and finished with a coat of asphalt on the outside of the block and, if the builder was careful, a clay tile drain at the footing.

Those block walls are now the town's characteristic basement problem. Water enters the cores through the top course, the face and the mortar joints, fills the wall, and drains out of the bottom course onto the floor. On the saturated Cheektowaga and Niagara soils the backfill stays wet for half the year and pushes; horizontal cracks two to four courses below grade, with a slight inward bow, are common along the streets between Union Road and the city line. The clay tile drains, where they exist, have largely silted shut.

Draining the wall, not just the floor

The repair that fits Cheektowaga's houses is an interior perimeter drain with weep holes drilled into every block core along the wet walls, so the wall empties into the drain instead of holding water, tied to a sump that can run for weeks during the March melt. Where a block wall has already bowed, carbon fiber straps or wall anchors go in before the drain is capped, and the yard side gets its downspouts extended and its grade corrected so the wall stops being loaded.

Sump discharge in Cheektowaga goes to the storm system or the yard, never the sanitary sewer, and on these flat lots the line has to be graded to drain empty between cycles or it will freeze. Because the town's sandy surface layer moves water sideways so readily, a neighbor's downspout or a new patio two doors down can change what your foundation sees; we look at the whole lot, not just your walls.