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April 2014
Perma-Seal advises homeowners to prepare for spring flooding Downers Grove-based company has been offering waterproofing services, for 35 years This week marks the one-year anniversary of a record-setting rainstorm that caused severe floods throughout most of northern Illinois and the Chicago metropolitan area. Over a two-day period from April 17 to 18, between 5 and 10 inches of rain poured onto many communities throughout the state. More than 5.5 inches of rain fell on Downers Grove in a 24-hour period. As a result of these torrential rains, homes and basements throughout the area experienced costly flood damage. “It seems like we have a 100-year flood every three or four years,” says Roy Spencer,owner and president of Downers Grove-based Perma-Seal. “People are much more aware of basement flooding this year, as people are starting to realize it wasn’t such a freak thing.” For 35 years, the waterproofing company has been working with homeowners throughout the Chicago metropolitan area and northwest Indiana to correct or prevent a variety of basement water issues that may arise during any rainstorm. Basement waterproofing, sump pump services, foundation repairs and plumbing work are just a few of the services Perma-Seal and other plumbing contractors offer. And with the memory of last year’s floods still fresh, Spencer says it’s important for homeowners to be aware of the ways they can address or prevent basement flooding during this time of year. Many of the service calls Perma-Seal received last April were for basement flooding caused by city sewer backup, failed sump pumps, subsurface flooding from overflowing streams or rivers, and foundation seepage. And while even the best basement waterproofing couldn’t prevent a river
Photos Courtesy of Perma-Seal
Perma-Seal technician inspects a sump pump.
from overflowing, Spencer says his technicians saw many basement floods that could have been prevented. “If your pumps weren’t checked, if they weren’t working, if they weren’t adequate or you didn’t have a backup pump, those are the biggest things we found that people could have done to avoid problems,” he says. Another common cause of basement flooding was backup from municipal sewer systems. Although there’s nothing a homeowner can do to prevent a city’s sewers from backing up, a sewer backup prevention system can stop sewers from backing up into a home. These systems use a series of check valves to prevent sewer water, which contains sewage and dangerous bacteria, from coming up
through a home’s plumbing. “Basically, it makes it impossible for the sewers to backup into your home, and you can still use your household plumbing even during a severe storm,” Spencer said.
A New Season Last spring’s storms notwithstanding, other types of weather can also cause basement water issues.
“When I started in this industry, it was, at best, a shady industry,” he says. “There was a lot of unethical conduct by the industry leaders at that point, and I saw an opportunity.”
Spencer says harsh winter weather and severe droughts, like those that hit the Midwest in 2012, can cause structural damage to a home.This damage happens when extreme temperatures and amounts of moisture cause underlying soil to shift.
When the company started in 1979, Spencer was working out of his apartment and the back of a Ford F-150 pickup truck. Today, the company has nearly 200 employees, 80 service trucks and three locations in Downers Grove, Elk Grove Village and Hammond, Ind. “We started as the world’s smallest water proofing company, and now we’re one of the world’s largest water proofing companies,” Spencer says, adding that word-of-mouth referrals still account for 60 percent of the company’s business.
Photos Courtesy of Perma-Seal
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“When I started, I said if we just do good, honest work and stand behind our work, our business is going to stand out. So, that’s what I did.”
35 Years of Service Perma-Seal celebrated 35 years of business in January, and the company’s founder Roy Spencer credits its success on what he calls “good, ethical business practices.”
Spencer says his founding principal was simple: standing behind good, honest work.
Roy Spencer, owner and president of Downers Grove-based Perma-Seal, founded the company in January 1979.
backup prevention and crawl space encapsulation, which seals off dirt floor crawl spaces from the elements.
Additionally, being attentive to customers’ needs has helped grow Perma-Seal’s business in other important ways. Spencer says listening to his customers also inspired him to introduce new services, such as sewer
“Your foundation is sitting on that soil, and sometimes it drops or moves disproportionally, and that creates a crack,” Spencer says. Some signs that this has occurred are doors and windows that do not shut properly, cracks in drywall or splits in basement floors. A foundation crack could create a seepage problem in a basement or be the sign of a more significant structural problem. “Sometimes it’s extreme, sometimes it’s not,” Spencer says. “But either way, if your foundation is structurally broken, it needs to be repaired.” For more information on waterproofing and common structural problems, visit www.permaseal.net. n Written by Jonathan Samples | Staff Reporter
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