Commercial Building Water Damage in Massachusetts

Massachusetts has some of the oldest building stock in the country, and that shows up in commercial water calls. The median home in the state was built in 1964, against 1980 nationally, and about 30 percent of homes were built before 1940. Rental and mixed-use buildings in Boston, Lowell, Lawrence, Worcester, New Bedford and Fall River are often a century old, with supply lines, drains and heating pipes that have been extended and patched many times. Many are triple-deckers or small apartment blocks where one leak runs through several units, and owner shares are low: Boston is about 36 percent owner-occupied and Lawrence about 28 percent.

Converted mill buildings are the other big group. Old brick mills in Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, Holyoke, Fall River, New Bedford, Fitchburg and Worcester now hold apartments, lofts, offices and labs, with modern finishes built inside heavy timber, brick and concrete. Water in those buildings travels along beams and through floor openings and shows up far from the source. Newer buildings carry their own risks: life sciences labs in Cambridge and the Seaport, office parks along Route 128 in Waltham, Burlington and Woburn, retail centers in Peabody, Danvers and Saugus, and warehouses along I-495 and I-290, where sprinkler branch lines and roof drains run through unheated space.

Weather drives the rest. Worcester averages 72.9 inches of snow a year and Boston 49.2 inches, and in the 13 days before February 22, 2015, MEMA logged 131 roof collapses statewide. On February 4, 2023, Boston dropped to 10 degrees below zero and Worcester to 13 below, the kind of night that splits pipes in closed buildings. Nor'easters push wind-driven rain into flat roofs and storefronts, a record tide flooded parts of the Boston waterfront in January 2018, and heavy rain can overload combined sewers in older cities and push water back through floor drains.

Speed matters more in a commercial building because water has more places to go and more people waiting on the space. A leak on an upper floor reaches the units or suites below within minutes, soaking ceiling tiles, drywall, carpet tiles and the insulation above them. Drywall wicks water upward, wet ceiling tiles sag and fall, and mold can start in 24 to 48 hours in wall cavities nobody can see. Every day a store, office, lab or apartment stays wet is a day tenants cannot use it, so extraction on the first visit and a drying plan with daily readings keep the building and the business moving.