Water damage restoration in Ogden, UT

Local conditions

Why Ogden homes take on water

Ogden gets its water problems from the mountains. Snow piles up on the Wasatch all winter, and when it melts in April and May, the Ogden and Weber rivers rise and the benches above town drain toward the valley. In 2023, after a record snowpack, residents filled sandbags for weeks and the high water partly washed out the highway up Ogden Canyon. In any wet spring, basements on the East Bench and around Mount Ogden see water through window wells and foundation walls, and lower areas near the rivers see groundwater come up through the floor.

Winter brings the other half. Cold air settles over the valley at night, and a few days in the single digits is enough to freeze a pipe in an outside wall, over a garage or near a drafty rim joist. Frost-free spigots with a hose left on and sprinkler lines that never got blown out crack in January and leak in March, often straight into a finished basement ceiling.

The age of the house matters, too. The Victorian and early 1900s homes around Jefferson Avenue, East Central and the blocks near Historic 25th Street have old galvanized supply lines, plaster walls and clay sewer laterals that tree roots have worked into for decades. The post-war ranch homes that fill much of the rest of the city have plumbing that is now 60 or 70 years old. The newer houses on the upper East Bench have more plastic lines, ice makers and upstairs laundry rooms, and more ways for a hose to split.

Hard water runs through all of it. Minerals collect at the bottom of water heater tanks, and a tank that rusts through in a basement utility room is one of the most common calls in town.

Whatever the cause, the job goes the same way: stop the water, get it out, remove what cannot be saved, and dry the rest before mold has a chance. Crews cover the 84401, 84403, 84404, 84405 ZIP codes and the towns around Ogden.