Boston, MA Leak Detection & Consulting

Five, used in combination rather than in sequence: controlled water testing, infrared thermography, moisture meter readings, drone inspection, and invasive testing, which means a small selective opening made for investigation. Which of them a building gets depends on how it is built, what the symptom looks like and frequently what month it is, because a February leak on an ice-dammed low-slope roof is investigated nothing like a wind-driven one on a Back Bay wall in November. On a brick or brownstone wall we also weigh how long that wall has been holding water before reading anything into a meter. We do not run a test whose result would not change the restoration scope.

Because in Boston the breach and the stain are usually in different places, and often at different times. Nor’easters drive rain sideways and upward into assemblies detailed for water that runs downward; freeze-thaw cycling then widens every path the storm found, and ice damming on a low-slope roof backs meltwater under flashings that shed ordinary rain perfectly well. Thick brownstone and brick laid in lime mortar absorb water and give it back slowly, so a stain can appear days after the rain responsible for it and sit quietly through the next one. In Back Bay, filled land and settling wood-pile foundations work joints open at the base of a wall, which makes some Boston facade leaks a movement problem before they are a water problem. Repair whichever component happens to sit nearest the stain and the water keeps arriving, and the owner pays two or three times over for one leak.

No. Forensic engineering, expert witness testimony and litigation support sit outside what Presto does, and we do not take that work on. Where a project already involves an insurance claim or an argument between a condo association and an owner over who pays for a leak, we are glad to work alongside the forensic engineer or consultant retained for it and to hand over what our testing found, but the engineering opinion has to come from that firm rather than from us. If you need one and do not have one, ask us and we will point you at Boston practices that do it.

A report on one building, written for the decision its owner actually has in front of them. It sets out what was inspected and by what method, every failure point identified, with photographs, the likely cause of each, the conclusions we drew, and the restoration scope those conclusions support. Because the report becomes the basis of the project specification, it is written to be used rather than filed, and to sit sensibly beside whatever the building already holds with the Boston Inspectional Services Department or, on a designated property, with the Boston Landmarks Commission. One thing a Boston report will not carry is a product approval number: Massachusetts runs no statewide product-approval or Notice of Acceptance register, and materials are accepted here on third-party testing and labeling under the state building code, so our specifications cite test standards instead.

It depends on the building, on how many candidate paths there are, and on which tests the symptoms call for. One suspected joint or perimeter can be resolved in a day or two. A whole envelope with several candidate areas, each needing controlled water testing in its turn, runs one to three weeks. Weather sets the outer limit here more than in a warm market: water testing tells you little about a frozen wall, and a booked test day gets moved by a nor’easter often enough that we build slack into the program. We give timelines during scoping so managers can sequence the investigation, the repair that follows it, and any five-year exterior wall inspection already coming due under Boston’s facade ordinance.