“A firefighter will run into a burning building. We won’t do that, but we will run into a building with a basement full of enough sewage to fill a backyard pool.” – Harry Allcroft, PuroClean of Delran Owner
Just blocks away from City Hall in downtown Philadelphia is a high-end condominium complex. It’s an old building, having been built in 1872, and one of its features is a cavernous brick basement. While this basement area is currently unoccupied, it does rest near residential living quarters. With that being said, residents were in for an unpleasant surprise recently when strong smells of sewage entered their condo units, having migrated up from the basement area.
Upon investigating, an 8-inch soil line was found to have been leaking into the area, contaminating an area of about 150 x 25 feet, in addition to three railroad car-like rooms, which measured 150 x 12 feet. It’s believed that the soil line was leaking sewage into the basement for many months before being detected, the problem so intense that plumbers refused to enter the area to repair the line until the bulk of the raw sewage was removed. And for good reason, as sewage, or black water, is grossly contaminated water that often includes pathogenic organisms consisting of viruses, bacteria and helminths.