The snow melted outside. Your basement found out first.

Find the valve on the front cellar wall, then find out how far the water went

If water is still running, the first job is the valve. In most Boston houses the main shutoff is in the basement where the service line comes through the front wall, near the meter. If the wet area is near the panel or a plug, leave that circuit off and stay out of the room.

Closing the main valve ends the flow, but the damage keeps moving. A split pipe in a bay window wall drains down through the plaster and lath to the sill. Water on a second floor comes through the ceiling of the unit below. In a basement, it soaks the paneling, the carpet pad, and the framing on the slab.

A local provider brings a moisture meter and a thermal camera before anyone brings a saw. Those numbers, not a guess, settle which plaster comes down and which stays up.

What the crew does in a Boston cellar, and why it matters to you

What happens	What it means for you
The basement is metered along the walls and the slab, not just where the puddle was	Water that ran behind the paneling or under the floor gets found before it feeds mold
Plaster, lath, and old wood trim are read with a meter before anyone pulls them	A hundred-year-old wall gets an answer instead of an assumption
Air movers and dehumidifiers go where the readings say, in a cellar that cannot dry on its own	A stone foundation that never fully dries in summer is dried on a plan, not a guess
The water is classified: clean supply, gray, or sewage and street water	A combined-sewer backup gets protective handling and disposal instead of a mop and bleach
Frozen-pipe and vacant-unit losses are traced back to how long the water ran	The scope covers the days the house sat wet, not just what you saw when you opened the door
Photos, moisture logs, and an itemized scope from the first visit	Your adjuster gets dates and numbers, not a story from memory

Before the first box goes to the curb

Shut the water off if you can reach the valve safely. Move what you can lift off the wet floor and get the boxes off the slab. Photograph every room before anything goes to the curb. Then call us and say what you found. You do not need to know whether the job is extraction, drying, or a sewer cleanup.

What makes a Boston house different when it floods

Most of the housing here went up between 1880 and 1925: triple-deckers in Dorchester and Somerville, brick rowhouses in the South End and Charlestown, two-families in Roslindale and Medford. They sit on fieldstone and brick foundations that pass groundwater at the mortar joints, and nearly every one has a basement. The plumbing is a century of patched cast iron and galvanized steel, with radiator pipes running through cold outside walls.

Then there is the weather. The winter of 2015 dropped about 110 inches of snow on the city, the most ever recorded here, and ice dams sent meltwater through ceilings for weeks. On February 4, 2023, the temperature at Logan hit ten below zero, and pipes and sprinkler lines split in houses, hospitals, and theaters across the region. On January 4, 2018, a nor'easter pushed Boston Harbor to its highest tide on record, and seawater ran down Seaport Boulevard and across Long Wharf into garages and lower floors. On an ordinary hard rain, the combined sewers in the older neighborhoods back up into the lowest drain in the house.

Water and sewer inside the city come from the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, which handles main breaks and backups on the street side. Rebuilding plaster, plumbing, or wiring usually needs a permit from the Inspectional Services Department. The surrounding cities run their own desks, and the area pages name the right one for your town.

Will my homeowners insurance cover a burst pipe or a flooded basement?

Many homeowner policies cover sudden water damage such as a burst pipe. Sewer backup and groundwater seepage often need a rider, and some insurers apply a different rule to a frozen pipe in an unheated unit. We make no promise about what your policy will pay; your adjuster decides that. The provider documents the loss with photos, daily moisture logs, and an itemized scope, so you and the adjuster talk about numbers instead of memories. Call before the adjuster if water is still moving. Stopping the damage comes first, and the photos and readings from that first visit are what the claim rests on.

We serve Boston, the inner ring, and the South Shore

We serve Dorchester, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, South Boston, East Boston, and Charlestown inside the city. We serve Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Malden, Everett, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop to the north, and Quincy and Weymouth down the South Shore. The areas page lists every community around Boston that these providers reach.

Call (857) 524-9927 now and tell us what you see. An independent local water damage provider anywhere in Suffolk County or the inner-ring cities takes it from there.