Inaccurate El Niño Predictions Cause Concern for Chicago Homeowners (Press Release)

Jan­u­ary 21,2016-Rolling Mead­ows, IL- It seems ​“El Niño” has become the go-to water cool­er con­ver­sa­tion almost any­where in the Chica­go area these days. With weath­er experts pre­dict­ing warmer temps and less pre­cip­i­ta­tion, the staff at U.S. Water­proof­ing was pre­pared for busi­ness to actu­al­ly slow down this win­ter. Instead, they have expe­ri­enced just the opposite.

“While Decem­ber was warmer, we saw very high pre­cip­i­ta­tion lev­els which led to an increase in base­ment seep­age issues. And now with more rain in the fore­cast, we are prepar­ing for our busiest Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary on record,” said Matthew Stock, Pres­i­dent and Own­er of U.S. Waterproofing.

Anoth­er rea­son the guys at U.S. Water­proof­ing are brac­ing for height­ened busi­ness are the dras­tic changes in tem­per­a­ture still expect­ed this win­ter. Extreme tem­per­a­tures on both ends of the spec­trum cause grad­ual dam­age. When the tem­per­a­ture goes from freeze-to-thaw and then back to freez­ing again, it leads to sig­nif­i­cant crack­ing in foun­da­tion walls. As the snow melts, these cracks pro­vide a path­way for water to seep into your base­ment, result­ing in dam­age to dry­wall, car­pet­ing and per­son­al belong­ings. It can also con­tribute to decreased indoor air qual­i­ty if mold starts to grow. 

“While tem­per­a­ture and pre­cip­i­ta­tion impacts asso­ci­at­ed with El Niño are favored, El Niño is not the only play­er,” Mike Halpert, deputy direc­tor of NOAA’s Cli­mate Pre­dic­tion Cen­ter, said in a state­ment. ​“Cold-air out­breaks and snow storms will like­ly occur at times this winter.”

In addi­tion to leak­ing base­ments and foun­da­tion cracking,U.S. Water­proof­ing wants home­own­ers to also con­sid­er sev­er­al oth­er poten­tial haz­ards this win­ter. To help con­sumers, they have cre­at­ed a ​“learn­ing cen­ter” on their web­site. This is a resource guide to help con­sumers with pre­ven­tive water­proof­ing ideas or to help fix prob­lems that have already occurred.

U.S. Water­proof­ing, (www​.uswa​ter​proof​ing​.com),the Midwest’s trust­ed base­ment water­proof­ing and foun­da­tion repair com­pa­ny, has fixed over 300,000 wet base­ments and set­tling foun­da­tions in the Chica­go area since they were found­ed in 1957. U.S. Water­proof­ing is always avail­able for ques­tions and they offer free con­sul­ta­tions to diag­nose as exist­ing issue or rec­om­mend pre­ven­tive mea­sures. They can be reached at 888.733.7243.

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