Water Damage Restoration in Davie, FL

Davie is a town in Broward County and, by the 2020 census, the largest town in Florida by population. It began on land the state drained around the turn of the 20th century, when an out-of-state businessman, Robert Parsell Davie, bought 44 square miles to develop farms and a town called Zona. Horseback riding is common, and many of the town's historic buildings are ranches and Western establishments. Davie is also where Interstate 595 meets Interstate 75. That history has two effects on water damage. Some properties are spread out, so a loss on a large lot can involve more than one building. And land that was drained for farming still relies on drainage, so in heavy rain, standing water can reach a building.

Davie's housing can include ranch properties with barns and outbuildings as well as slab-on-grade stucco homes with tile or shingle roofs. On any of them, a loss can start the same way: a water heater, a supply line, an air-conditioner drain line, or rain pushed in by wind at a roof, a window or a sliding door. On a larger lot the difference is scale, because more than one building can be wet and the crew has to know about each one.

On a large lot, rain that outpaces what the ground can absorb collects at low spots, and a low spot beside a house can send water to a threshold, a garage door or a sliding door. On a spread-out property, water can linger near the buildings after the rain stops.

Water that comes inside from the yard is treated as Category 3, the contaminated class, under the IICRC S500 standard. The water is extracted, the wet carpet pad, baseboard and lower drywall are removed, the surfaces are cleaned, and the structure is then dried to a recorded goal.

A horse property can have a barn or other outbuildings in addition to the house. When a storm or a failed line wets more than one structure, the crew maps and documents each building separately, noting what its floors and walls are made of.