Grosse Pointe is five municipalities sitting on three different drainage systems, and one of them is in two counties. Which Pointe you are in decides where your water goes and what comes back up. On site in 60 minutes. The estimate is free.
This page is published by Prime Restoration, a Michigan licensed residential builder dispatching from Sterling Heights. It is one page for all five Pointes rather than five near-identical ones, because the thing that actually differs between them is the infrastructure, and that is best read side by side. Municipal facts come from each city, from the Milk River Intercounty Drain Drainage District and from local reporting, and every source is named. Last updated 2026-09-14.
The thing nobody writes down
Because they are not on the same sewer, and in some cases not even in the same county.
Almost everything written about restoration in this area treats Grosse Pointe as one market with one problem. It is five separate cities that made five separate infrastructure decisions over roughly a century, and the water in your basement is downstream of whichever one your street was built under.
Grosse Pointe Woods drains north, into Macomb County. The Milk River Intercounty Drain Drainage District, established in 1908, takes storm drainage from Harper Woods and St. Clair Shores and combined sewage from the City of Grosse Pointe Woods. Enclosed drains carry it to the Milk River Retention Treatment Basin, where it is pumped into Wayne County Northeast Sewage Disposal System, having been screened, settled, stored, disinfected with sodium hypochlorite and aerated. When the basin is over capacity in a major wet weather event, flow is screened, settled, skimmed and disinfected before discharge to the Milk River.
Grosse Pointe Park drains west, toward Detroit. Different pipe, different pump stations, different failure history, same lake a hundred yards away.
Grosse Pointe Farms runs its own. The Farms sanitary and storm sewers were originally built as an interconnected combined system in the 1920s, alongside the Kerby Road Sewage Pump Station, which is the southernmost facility of the Southeast Macomb Sanitary District. The Farms is separating that system now, on a published schedule.
The City of Grosse Pointe is mostly already separated, with pockets that are not, which is arguably the hardest case for a homeowner to reason about because the answer changes within a few streets.
So the first useful question in the Pointes is not how bad the storm was. It is which system your street is on. That decides whether what came up your floor drain is contaminated water requiring containment and removal, or clean water that can largely be dried in place. It is the difference between a two day job and a two week one, and you can find the answer with one phone call to your own city before anything ever happens.
Five municipalities, side by side
This is the table to find your own city in before you call anybody. The drainage column is the one that changes the scope.
| Municipality | Incorporated | Size and ZIP | Where the water goes | Housing stock | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grosse Pointe Park | Village 1907, city 1950 | 2.17 sq mi land, 1.54 sq mi water, 11,595 people in 2020, 48230 | Drains west, into the Detroit system. Combined sewer. | Pre-1930 throughout, from the lakefront estates down to the multi-family blocks in the north west corner locally known as the Cabbage Patch. | The oldest and densest of the five, and the one with the longest documented backup record. Detailed separately in our Grosse Pointe Park comparison guide. |
| City of Grosse Pointe | The original Grosse Pointe; the Farms broke off in 1893 | The smallest of the five by land area, 48230 | Mostly separated already, with pockets still combined. A stormwater separation and capital improvements programme is under way. | Compact pre-war grid behind the Kercheval retail spine, with later infill. | The mixed status is the trap. Two houses four streets apart can be on different systems, so the category question is genuinely open rather than assumed. |
| Grosse Pointe Farms | Village 1893, city 1949 | 2.73 sq mi land, 9.59 sq mi water, 10,148 people in 2020, elevation 607 ft, 48230 and 48236 | Built as an interconnected combined system in the 1920s alongside the Kerby Road Sewage Pump Station. Actively being separated now. | The widest spread of any Pointe. Bungalows through to mansions, plus ranch and newer builds on subdivided estate land. | Live construction through 2028. Where the street outside you has been separated and where it has not is a question with a current answer, and it changes every season. |
| Grosse Pointe Woods | Village of Lochmoor 1927, city 1950 | 3.24 sq mi land, 16,487 people in 2020, elevation 584 ft, 48236 | Combined sewers discharging north into the Milk River Treatment System, not west into Detroit. | Built around and just after the Second World War. Post-war block and poured foundations rather than pre-war stone. | The largest of the five by population and it has no Lake St. Clair shoreline at all. Treating it as lakefront housing gets the mechanism wrong before anyone opens a wall. |
| Grosse Pointe Shores | Village 1911, city 2009 | 1.11 sq mi land against 17.97 sq mi water, 94.17% water, 2,647 people in 2020, elevation 581 ft, 48236 | Split across Wayne and Macomb counties, with the majority of the land in Wayne. | Low density, large lots, substantial lakefront properties. | Which county your parcel sits in decides which drain authority owns the public side. That is worth knowing before you spend a week calling the wrong one. |
Live, dated, checkable
It is under construction, with contract numbers and completion dates attached, and it is the single largest change to water risk in the Pointes in a generation.
In March 2026 the Farms awarded the final two phases of its programme. The Moross and Chalfonte pump station went to Sorensen Gross Company Inc. of Flint at $18,733,000. The inland district sewer separation went to DiPonio Contracting LLC at $15,926,949.75. They are funded by up to $33,380,000 in general obligation unlimited tax bonds, on top of $11,875,000 issued in March 2025.
Construction was set to begin in summer 2026, with the final phase completing December 2027 and the pump station in summer 2028. The Farms expects about one third of the wet weather flow entering its combined system to be separated out.
City Manager Shane Reeside: “We are at the point after many, many years to award contracts to the final two phases of our sewer separation program.” Finance Director Tim Rowland, on what it costs a household: “The first year we anticipate the millage to be approximately 1.8 mills. And over the length of the bond, we expect it to be approximately 2 mills per year on average.”
Why a restoration company is telling you this
Because if you live in the Farms inland district, your own risk picture has a date on it. A street that is separated is a street where a heavy rain no longer pushes sewage backward into the lowest opening in your house, and where a basement water event becomes a clean water problem instead of a contaminated one. That is a genuine change in what a loss costs you, and it is worth knowing whether your block is done, scheduled, or in the third that will still be combined afterwards.
It also means the honest answer to what your street does changes year on year through 2028. Ask your city, not a contractor, and ask again next spring.
Fourteen named places
Distance from the lake sets the groundwater half. Which municipality you are in sets the sewer half. Almost every Grosse Pointe loss is one of those two, and a good number are both in the same week.
| Place | Where | Why it matters to a water loss |
|---|---|---|
| The Hill | Kercheval Avenue, Grosse Pointe Farms | The Farms retail district. Commercial basements on shared laterals, and the point where a backup reaches a business and a flat above it on the same line. |
| Moross and Chalfonte | Grosse Pointe Farms | Site of the new pump station under contract. Named here because it is the single most consequential piece of public infrastructure being built in the Pointes right now. |
| Kerby Road | Grosse Pointe Farms | The 1920s pump station that the Farms combined system was built around, and the southernmost facility in the Southeast Macomb Sanitary District. |
| The Inland District | Grosse Pointe Farms | The Farms own term for the non-lakefront half of the city, and the half currently being separated. If you live here, your street is either done or scheduled. |
| Windmill Pointe | Grosse Pointe Park lakefront | Where the lake becomes the Detroit River. Lakefront estate stock on a water table that sits close to the finished basement floor. |
| The Cabbage Patch | North west corner of Grosse Pointe Park | The Park own name for its multi-family blocks. Different building type, different owner, and a backup here affects several households at once. |
| Patterson Park | Grosse Pointe Park | Neighbourhood park and the streets around it. Interior Park stock rather than lakefront. |
| Vernier Road corridor | Grosse Pointe Woods and Shores | The northern spine. The boundary zone where Wayne County drainage decisions meet Macomb County ones. |
| Mack Avenue corridor | Runs through Farms, City and Woods | The inland commercial spine, furthest from the lake and highest in elevation, and therefore the least lake-driven part of the Pointes. |
| Jefferson Avenue | Park and City lakefront approach | The old estate approach. Large pre-war houses with original service wings and deep basements. |
| Lake Shore Road | Farms, Shores and the northern lakefront | The closest housing to the water in the entire Pointes, and the stock where lake level, not rainfall, is the variable. |
| Pier Park | Grosse Pointe Farms lakefront | The municipal lakefront. Useful as a reference point for how close the lake surface actually sits to basement floor level nearby. |
| Harper Woods edge | Western boundary of Grosse Pointe Woods | Harper Woods runs a separated storm system into the same Milk River treatment plant that takes the Woods combined flow. Two sewer philosophies, one destination. |
| St. Clair Shores edge | Northern boundary | Where the Pointes end and Macomb County begins. The Milk River Retention Treatment Basin sits on this side of the line. |
With dates and sources
Four entries, each dated. We give the date and the source instead of an adjective, because a restoration company telling you a storm was bad is not information.
Approximately 200 homes took sewer backups. City engineers attributed it to what was reported as a combination of equipment failure and heavy rainfall, and new protocols followed including staffed pump station monitoring during significant weather events. This is the clearest documented case in the Pointes of a backup caused by a machine rather than by rainfall volume alone.
Record and near-record water levels on Lake St. Clair. Average May levels for Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie broke records, with Lake St. Clair rising 23 centimetres over the preceding month and sitting about 15 centimetres above May 2018. Sustained high lake level raises the water table behind a lakefront basement wall for months rather than hours, which is a different mechanism from a storm and produces a different loss.
The event that produced the largest single concentration of contaminated basement losses in the Pointes. It is covered in detail, with its specific infrastructure failures, in our Grosse Pointe Park comparison guide rather than repeated here.
The Farms awarded the final two phases of its sewer separation programme and issued bonds against them. This is not a flood, it is the response to forty years of them, and it is the reason the Farms risk picture is different in 2028 from what it is today.
For the June 2021 event in Grosse Pointe Park specifically, including which infrastructure failed and what it did to the Park housing stock, see our Grosse Pointe Park contractor comparison. It covers one municipality in depth. This page covers all five in breadth, and the two are deliberately not the same document.
Up, or in
By where it came from, not by what it looks like. Clean water on a dirty basement floor looks filthy within minutes and is still Category 1. A sewer surcharge can arrive nearly clear and is Category 3 from the first second. The entry point is the whole answer.
| Category | Typical source | How it shows up here | What the scope becomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category 1, clean | Supply line, water heater, ice maker, a burst line in an unheated space | Genuinely common and frequently misread. Pre-war Pointes houses run long horizontal supply runs through unconditioned crawl and attic space, so a clean-water failure can travel a long way from the fitting that caused it. | The widest save window there is. Carpet and pad often stay, hard surfaces almost always, plaster is a strong candidate for drying in place, and no containment is needed. Speed buys back the most material in this category and nowhere else. |
| Category 2, grey | Appliance discharge, and groundwater arriving through the wall or the cove joint | The lakefront mechanism. Close to Lake St. Clair the water table sits high, so mortar seams, cove joints and original drain tile move water into the basement on any saturated-ground week, with no storm required. | Pad out, carpet a judgement call, hard surfaces recoverable. The wall is the long pole, because a wall that is being fed by groundwater will keep re-wetting the room until the source is addressed rather than dried around. |
| Category 3, black | Combined sewer surcharge back through a floor drain | The default assumption where the system is still combined, which today is most of the Park, most of the Woods, the unseparated parts of the Farms, and the remaining combined pockets in the City. Contaminated from the first minute. | Containment before anything moves. Porous material in the affected area is removed rather than dried, including carpet, pad and typically the lower band of wall. Non-porous and semi-porous surfaces are cleaned and treated. Drying starts after removal. |
| Reclassified by time | Clean water left standing | Runs faster in a closed pre-war basement with poor air movement, and faster again in plaster, which holds water rather than shedding it. | Category 1 degrades toward Category 2 in roughly 24 to 48 hours and past about 72 hours is generally handled as Category 3. The scope escalates on the clock rather than on the event, which is why the timestamp on your first photograph matters more than the photograph. |
The conversation that sets the number
Not square footage. Material, and the decision made about each material in the first day. In this housing stock the difference between replicating and replacing is most of the invoice. The estimate is free, and this list is what you should be reading in it.
| Material | How it behaves wet | Can it be saved | What actually decides it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plaster over wood lath | Holds water far longer than drywall and fails in sheets rather than crumbling gradually. Over-drying it is its own failure mode, because the key can let go. | Often yes, if the key is intact and it is reached early. | Whether the plaster is still keyed to the lath, and whether a ceiling is holding a pocket. Tearing out every plaster ceiling by default is the fast decision, not the correct one, and in this housing stock it is also the expensive one. |
| Original hardwood and parquet | Cups as a moisture gradient forms across the board thickness. Thicker and better material than modern engineered flooring, and in the estate stock often laid in patterns that cannot be bought. | Frequently, with mats and controlled dehumidification rather than removal. | Time and heat kill it, not water. Cupping is a gradient that can flatten as the board equalises. The save decision is made in the first days or it is not available. |
| Slate, tile and copper roof assemblies | Not a water damage material, but the thing that let the water in. Slate spalls and cracks with freeze cycles, and copper flashing fails at the seam long before the field of the roof does. | Not our trade. We fix what the water did, and we will tell you which one you need first. | If the source is above the ceiling rather than below the floor, the first call is a roofer who works on slate specifically, not a general roofer and not us. |
| Leaded and stained glass | The glass survives. The came and the surrounding sash are what suffer. | Almost always worth protecting in place rather than removing. | Flag it before demolition starts. Once a crew is moving fast on a wall, original glazing is the thing that gets lost, and it does not come back from a supplier. |
| Original millwork and panelled rooms | Absorbs at the joints and at the unfinished back face long before the visible surface shows anything. | Depends entirely on category and contact time. | This is the material that cannot be bought back. Replication is a millwork trade at a millwork price. It belongs in the scope on day one rather than as a discovery in week three. |
| Post-war block and poured foundation walls | Block holds water in the hollow cores. Poured concrete releases faster but still runs behind the room. | Always saved. Dried, not removed. | Dominant in Grosse Pointe Woods, where the stock is mid-century rather than pre-war. A surface meter on a painted face reads the paint. Ask what reaches the wall itself. |
What the week looks like
If it is still coming in, that is a plumber, a roofer or your municipality. Wide shots and close shots, timestamped, before anything moves.
On site in 60 minutes. The first question is where it entered, because in the Pointes that answer changes the category, and the category changes everything after it.
Readings against a dry standard taken from an unaffected part of the same house in the same material, and a decision on each original material, dry in place or remove, with a reason attached. The estimate is free and you keep it.
On a contaminated loss, containment first. Original glazing, millwork and salvageable plaster protected rather than cleared. Flood cuts above the wet zone, not at the tide line.
Longer here than in newer stock, because plaster gives moisture up slowly and a lakefront wall may still be being fed. It ends on a reading.
Plaster systems, trim profiles, parquet and floor refinishing sequenced after the cavity is at dry standard. This is a booked trade, measured in weeks.
Call (586) 277-1069. We come out, we meter the walls, and we tell you what is wet and what is not. The estimate is free and it is written down.
Mold after a water loss
Usually because the assembly was never dried, only the room was. Plaster holds water and gives it up slowly. A lakefront wall may still be being fed from outside. Either way the surface reads dry, the equipment leaves, and the conditions come back within a fortnight.
Growth after a water loss is a moisture problem before it is anything else. The sequence is find and stop the water, contain the affected area, remove porous material that cannot be cleaned, clean what can be cleaned, then dry the assembly to a documented standard. Treating a surface while the wall behind it is still loaded is painting over a leak.
Two things we will not do, and you should expect the same from anyone you hire. We will not tell you what species anything is. Identifying it takes a laboratory and it does not change what gets removed. We will not clear our own work. Testing and post-remediation verification should come from an independent hygienist with no financial interest in the result. A company that inspects, remediates and then passes its own job has marked its own homework. If you want the independent check arranged, we will point you at it rather than quote you for it.
Anything about health effects belongs to a physician or a public health authority. It is not something a restoration contractor should be telling you, and a company that leads with it is selling from fear.
More on the sequence: mold after water damage.
What each measure does and does not do
Everything below is listed with what it does not cover, because the failure here is a homeowner who installed one thing and assumed the house was solved from every direction. Near the lake, on a combined street, water arrives from two directions and no single measure addresses both.
What it does. Closes a one way gate when flow reverses, so a surcharging combined main cannot push back through the floor drain.
What it does not do. Anything about groundwater arriving through the wall, which near the lake is a separate and often simultaneous problem. It also does nothing if the water is already inside the house.
Who does it. A licensed plumber. Camera the lateral first. In pre-war stock the lateral may be original, and a valve on a failing line is the right hardware on the wrong pipe.
What it does. Costs a phone call and changes your whole risk picture. In the Farms this is a live and moving answer through 2028. In the City it varies block by block.
What it does not do. Protect you by itself. It tells you which of the two mechanisms you should be defending against.
Who does it. Your own municipality public service department. Ask the question in those words: is my street on a combined or a separated system today.
What it does. Keeps the pit clearing when the primary fails or the power goes out, which in the storms that cause these losses is the same moment.
What it does not do. Help a house with no interior drain tile feeding the pit, which is common in the pre-war stock. A pump can only move water that reaches it.
Who does it. A plumber for the install, you for the test. Pour a bucket into the pit twice a year and watch the full cycle, including the backup, with the breaker off.
What it does. Moves roof water six to ten feet out and re-establishes fall away from the wall. Cheap, and under-used even on large lots.
What it does not do. Anything for a sewer surcharge. It is a seepage measure only.
Who does it. Landscaping, or you. On an estate lot with mature planting tight to the house, ask them to say out loud which sides cannot be fixed.
What it does. Gives the groundwater a managed path in a lakefront basement where the water table is genuinely high and the wall is going to weep regardless.
What it does not do. Stop a sewer surcharge, and it is a significant construction job rather than a weekend fix.
Who does it. A basement waterproofing contractor. Get the moisture mapped first so you know whether the problem is groundwater or a failed lateral, because the two are fixed by different trades.
What it does. Catches the seam failure that puts water into a plaster ceiling before it puts water into a plaster ceiling.
What it does not do. Touch anything below grade.
Who does it. A roofer who works on slate specifically. We are not roofers and we will say so rather than quote you for a roof.
Who actually covers this address
It depends on whether the water has stopped. If it is still entering the building, the best contractor is whoever puts a truck on your street soonest, and that is a proximity question we often lose. If the water has stopped and the question is what gets saved in a house full of plaster, parquet and original glazing, the argument is different. Here is the honest version with addresses.
| Company | Dispatch address | Verified this month | The honest part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prime Restoration | Sterling Heights, MI 48313 | The company that publishes this page. Michigan Residential Builder #262500492. 5.0 on Google, 100+ reviews. On site in 60 minutes. | We dispatch from Macomb County, not from the east side. We are not the closest company to the Pointes and we do not pretend to be. What we ask for is the part after the water stops. |
| SERVPRO of Oak Park / Ferndale | 825 Orchard Street, Ferndale, MI 48220 | Publishes General Contractor License 210120201 and states 100% IICRC certified. Its published service area is the south Oakland inner ring rather than the Pointes. | Named because it is a real, verifiable Michigan franchise with a published licence number. Its own site does not list the Grosse Pointes, which is worth knowing before you assume a national name covers your address. |
| 1-800 WATER DAMAGE of Royal Oak / Sterling Heights | 32494 Dequindre Rd., Warren, MI 48092 | Publishes an eleven-city service area covering Berkley, Clawson, Ferndale, Hazel Park, Huntington Woods, Madison Heights, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak, Sterling Heights, Troy and Warren. Phone 248-607-6830. | Same point. The published service area does not include any of the five Pointes. A franchise brand appearing in your search results is not the same as a franchise that covers your street. |
How this comparison was compiled
Addresses, service area lists and licence numbers were read from each company’s own public website in September 2026 and are reproduced as published. Municipal facts come from the five cities, from the Milk River Intercounty Drain Drainage District and the Southeast Macomb Sanitary District, and from Grosse Pointe News, C & G Newspapers and Patch. Lake level figures come from published reporting on United States Army Corps of Engineers and Canadian water level data. No company paid for placement and nothing here is a ranking. Where a fact could not be verified this month it is not on the page, which is why no competitor review count, star rating, response window or price appears.
Use these on us too
Eight questions, written so you can put them to whoever is standing in your basement, including us. The first one is the one most companies cannot answer, and it is the one that decides your category.
Ask it of your municipality, not of a contractor. It is the single most useful piece of information you can have before a storm, and in the Farms the answer changes as construction progresses. A contractor who has not asked which system you are on is guessing at your category.
This is the question that sets the whole job, and you can usually answer it yourself if you got there early. Up is contaminated. In is usually not. Say which one you saw before anyone starts writing a scope.
A moisture reading with no baseline is a number without a meaning. The dry standard comes from an unaffected part of the same house in the same material. If nobody can produce one, drying is being judged by feel.
In this housing stock that list is the money. You want it before the saw runs, with a reason attached to each line, and you want original material called out by name.
The most common failure on a pre-war house is a mitigation crew that dries beautifully and hands off to nobody. Replication is a scheduled trade, not an afterthought.
Ask it before day one. Original leaded glass and panelled rooms are lost in the first hour of a fast tear-out and they are not replaceable at any price.
The correct answer is a reading. Equipment pulled on a schedule rather than on a meter is the most common origin of growth found weeks later.
Residential building work in Michigan requires licensing. Ask, verify, and do not accept a business card. Ours is Michigan Residential Builder #262500492.
Grosse Pointe questions
Five separate municipalities, and for a water loss the difference is not cosmetic. Grosse Pointe Park was a village in 1907 and a city in 1950. The City of Grosse Pointe is the original from which Grosse Pointe Farms broke off in 1893. Grosse Pointe Farms became a city in 1949. Grosse Pointe Woods was the Village of Lochmoor in 1927 and a city in 1950. Grosse Pointe Shores was a village in 1911 and a city only in 2009. They sit on three different drainage arrangements, they were built in different decades, and one of them is not even in one county. A contractor treating all five as a single market is bringing the same assumption to five different problems.
Most of them, still, but not in the same direction and not to the same degree. Grosse Pointe Woods runs combined sewers that discharge into the Milk River Treatment System to the north. Grosse Pointe Farms was built as an interconnected combined system in the 1920s around the Kerby Road Sewage Pump Station and is in the middle of separating it now. The City of Grosse Pointe has separate storm and sanitary lines through much of the city with areas that are still combined. Grosse Pointe Park drains west toward the Detroit system. The practical instruction is the same everywhere: ask your own municipality whether your street is combined or separated today, because the answer decides whether a basement backup here is a contaminated loss or a clean one.
North, into Macomb County, which surprises people who assume everything on the east side drains toward Detroit. The Milk River Intercounty Drain Drainage District was established in 1908 and its facilities accept storm drainage from Harper Woods and St. Clair Shores and combined sewage from the City of Grosse Pointe Woods. Enclosed drains carry that flow to the Milk River Retention Treatment Basin, where it is pumped into Wayne County Northeast Sewage Disposal System. The basin provides combined sewage overflow treatment through screening, settling, storage, sodium hypochlorite disinfection and aeration. If the basin capacity is exceeded in a major wet weather event, flow is screened, settled, skimmed and disinfected before discharge to the Milk River. So a Woods basement and a Park basement are downstream of entirely different infrastructure.
It is under construction with dates attached. In March 2026 the Farms awarded the final two phases: a Moross and Chalfonte pump station contract to Sorensen Gross Company Inc. of Flint at $18,733,000, and an inland district sewer separation contract to DiPonio Contracting LLC at $15,926,949.75, funded by up to $33,380,000 in general obligation unlimited tax bonds on top of $11,875,000 issued in March 2025. Construction was set to begin in summer 2026, with the final phase completing December 2027 and the pump station in summer 2028. City Manager Shane Reeside described it as being "at the point after many, many years to award contracts to the final two phases of our sewer separation program", with the goal of reducing the likelihood of basement flooding. Finance Director Tim Rowland put the cost at "approximately 1.8 mills" in the first year and "approximately 2 mills per year on average" over the length of the bond. The Farms expects about one third of the wet weather flow entering the combined system to be separated out.
No, and this matters more than it sounds. Grosse Pointe Woods is the largest of the five by population at 16,487 in 2020 across 3.24 square miles, and it has no Lake St. Clair shoreline at all. It owns a park on the lake in neighbouring St. Clair Shores, which is a different thing. So the lakefront mechanisms that dominate thinking about the Pointes, high water table, seepage through a wall in a wet week, lake level as a seasonal variable, are not the Woods problem. The Woods problem is a mid-century inland city on a combined system that drains to another county. Getting that wrong sends a crew looking for groundwater when the water came up the drain.
Because it is in two counties and it is almost entirely water. Grosse Pointe Shores spans Wayne and Macomb counties with the majority of its land area in Wayne, and the split is real enough that the Wayne portion attends the Grosse Pointe Public School System while the Macomb portion is in the South Lake School District. It has 1.11 square miles of land against 17.97 square miles of water, which is 94.17% of its total area, because the city limits run east to the centre of Lake St. Clair at the Canadian border. For a homeowner with a public side drainage problem, the useful consequence is that which county your parcel is in decides which drain authority you are dealing with. That is worth establishing in the first hour rather than the second week.
Slowly, and for months at a time, which is what makes it different from a storm. Sustained high lake level raises the water table behind a lakefront basement wall and keeps it raised. In May 2019 average monthly levels on Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie broke records, with Lake St. Clair up 23 centimetres over the preceding month and about 15 centimetres above May 2018, and 2019 and 2020 were both record or near-record years. A basement that has been dry for thirty years can begin weeping at the cove joint in a high year with no leak and no storm involved. The tell is that it is slow, it is low on the wall, and it correlates with the season rather than with a specific night. It is also the one mechanism no plumber can fix, because nothing has failed.
Different mechanism, different category, different money, and in the Pointes it is often the difference between a two day job and a two week one. Water pushing up through the floor drain is a surcharging combined main and is contaminated from the first minute, which means containment, removal of porous material and treatment before drying begins. Water weeping through mortar seams, at the cove joint where wall meets floor, or through original drain tile is groundwater, generally a lower category, with far more of the room recoverable. Near the lake you can genuinely have both in one week from two directions. Tell whoever you call which one you saw first, and say it before they start writing.
Often, and it is worth asking rather than assuming, because the default answer from a fast crew is no. Plaster over wood lath holds water longer than drywall, can frequently be dried in place when the key is intact, and fails in sheets rather than crumbling. The variables are how long it was wet, whether the lath is still keyed, and whether a ceiling is holding a pocket. Over-drying is its own risk, because an aggressive dry can let the key go. Original hardwood and patterned parquet are usually thicker and better material than anything modern and can often be dried with mats and controlled dehumidification rather than pulled. Cupping is a moisture gradient across the board, not a verdict, and it can flatten as the board equalises. What kills both is time and heat, so the save decision is made in the first days or it is not available.
No. We are not roofers and we will tell you that in the first conversation rather than after we have your money. We fix what the water did, and we will tell you which one you need first. In the Pointes that distinction comes up more than anywhere else we work, because slate, tile and copper assemblies fail at the seam and at the flashing long before the field of the roof does, and the water shows up as a stain on a plaster ceiling two rooms from the actual entry point. If the source is above the ceiling rather than below the floor, the first call is a roofer who works on slate specifically. We will happily do the drying and the plaster afterwards, and we will not start it while water is still coming in.
Growth after a water loss is a moisture problem before it is anything else, so the sequence starts with finding and stopping the water rather than treating the surface. From there it is containment of the affected area, removal of porous material that cannot be cleaned, cleaning of what can, and drying the assembly to a documented standard so the conditions that produced the growth are gone. Two things we will not do. We will not tell you what species anything is, because identifying it takes a laboratory and it does not change the removal. And we will not clear our own work. Testing and post-remediation verification should come from an independent hygienist with no financial interest in the result. Anything about health effects belongs to a physician or a public health authority, not to a restoration contractor.
On site in 60 minutes, dispatching 24 hours a day from Sterling Heights, usually down I-94 or Jefferson depending on which Pointe. We are not the closest restoration company to the east side and we will say so. If water is actively entering the building, call whoever can put a truck on your street soonest. What we would ask for is the drying and the rebuild, which in this housing stock is where the outcome is actually decided, because the finishes here are replicated rather than replaced.
Get contents up off the floor if it is safe, and stop there. On a suspected sewer surcharge, pulling carpet without containment moves contaminated material through the rest of the house. There is also a practical reason to wait. What comes out and what stays is a decision made from readings, and once the carpet and pad are in a pile outside nobody can tell what the water actually reached. In a house with original material, add a third reason: the things worth saving are the things a hurrying person damages first. Photographs, contents up, then leave it.
It depends on what is going back rather than what came out, and it depends on which of the five municipalities you are in, because they each run their own building department. Like for like interior cosmetic repair generally does not require a permit. Structural framing, plumbing rough-in beyond a fixture swap, electrical circuit changes and mechanical equipment replacement generally do. Two things come up more here than in newer suburbs. Pre-1950 houses frequently have early wiring behind the plaster, and once a wall is open that becomes an electrical conversation nobody planned for. And work visible from the street on a designated property can carry additional review. Confirm current requirements with your own city building department for your specific address before scheduling.
The housing stock changes faster than the drive time does. Each of these is a different problem rather than the same page with the city name swapped.
