Basement Waterproofing in Tonawanda, NY

City and town: two housing eras on the same wet ground

The city of Tonawanda is small and old. Its roughly 7,400 housing units, by the ACS 2024 five-year estimate, are about 38 percent pre-1940 and about 36 percent from the 1950s, with almost nothing built since 1970. The canal-era neighborhoods near the creek and the river sit on stone and early block foundations; the 1950s blocks that filled in around them are hollow block. The town of Tonawanda, which includes Kenmore, is larger, about 35,600 units by the 2024 one-year estimate, and even more concentrated in one era: roughly 45 percent of its housing was built in the 1950s, with about 17 percent pre-1940.

The ground under both is the Tonawanda Plain, the flat bed of glacial Lake Tonawanda that the county soil survey maps as Niagara, Canandaigua and Cosad soils and Urban land complexes. The survey's one direct comment on the area is worth quoting: some areas of this map unit on the Tonawanda Plain are susceptible to flooding. The Niagara soils have a seasonal high water table within about a foot and a half of the surface in winter and spring; the Canandaigua soils in the depressions are at or near the surface for prolonged periods and are sometimes ponded.

Where the water shows up in Tonawanda basements

In the older city neighborhoods the complaint is seepage through the whole face of a stone or brick wall and water standing at the floor edge after every melt. In the 1950s block houses of the town, from the Brighton area out to the river, the wall fills and leaks at the bottom course, and floors that were dry for decades have begun to weep at the cove joint as old clay tile drains fail. Near the creeks and the river the water table is close enough to the surface that a sump can run much of the winter.

Sewer backups are a separate issue. The town of Tonawanda has separate storm and sanitary sewers, and water arriving through a floor drain during a storm is a lateral or main problem rather than groundwater. We check the floor drain on every Tonawanda assessment so the two are not confused.

Systems built for a floodplain water table

The dependable fix here is drainage at the footing and a sump with real capacity: a full liner set below the slab in washed stone, a primary pump chosen for sustained flow rather than peak rating, a battery backup because the melt and the outages arrive together, and a discharge line that leaves the house above grade, runs to daylight or the storm system, and drains empty so it cannot freeze. Stone walls in the city get a drainage board lapped into the drain; block walls in the town get their cores weeped.

Because the plain is so flat, discharge routing takes more thought in Tonawanda than in hillier towns. Pumping into the yard on a lot with no fall puts the water back against the house within a day. We find the outlet first, then design the system to reach it.