Ojai water damage: old houses and burn scars
SOS Restoration of Ventura County works the Ojai Valley, harder to reach than its size suggests. We dry the house and rebuild it, English or Spanish. The meter reading is free. Any hour: (805) 427-9039.
somebody who can dispatch, not a recording
water pulled, smoke cleared, rooms rebuilt
from the coast to the backcountry of Ventura County
IICRC #70194273
Water is coming in right now. First step?
Old houses and channels through the middle of town shape most of these losses.
A technician drives out and meters the building before anything is torn out or priced.
Give our dispatcher the street and what you can see. On site the meter goes into the framing and the cavities. It separates what holds water from what is only stained. That reading costs nothing, and nothing gets signed for it.
Stewart Canyon came down my street. Now what?
Move uphill and stay out of it; that water carries what the canyon picked up.
Ojai floods from channels that run through town, not past it. The city counts five channels. Stewart Canyon down the middle, Fox Canyon Barranca across the east, Thacher Creek into San Antonio Creek. Then call, and let a meter decide how far in it went.
A Casitas main flooded my floor. Who pays?
Not our call, and any company that says it knows is gambling with your money.
What we can do is make the answer provable: photos before anything moves, timed readings, an itemized list. Ojai splits from its neighbors here. It does not drink Lake Casitas water; the Ojai Water System pulls mainly from six wells.
From 1954: what before you open a wall?
We treat what is behind it as asbestos and lead until a lab says otherwise.
In Ojai that is arithmetic, not caution. 31.0 percent of homes predate 1960, against 14.5 countywide. 284 were standing in 1939. The sample comes before the saw, and waiting on the lab is not optional.
Mold in an old crawl space. How far?
Farther than the visible patch, usually.
The only honest way to find the edge is to open a small area and read the framing.
Of Ojai’s 3,467 homes, 2,584 are detached single-family, and not one is a mobile home. A typical job is a house with its own crawl space and attic.
What do you bring to an Ojai job?
All six, and the age of the houses runs through every one.
Coast or backcountry, we come ready for it
Water damage
Fire and smoke
Storm and debris
Sewage
Reconstruction
The hill burned, then rain, then mud. Same claim?
Two losses, usually read by two policies, told apart on paper first.
We will not tell you what your policy covers. We document them separately, room by room, and you file. The Thomas Fire is still the reference here: 281,893 acres over thirty-nine days across the winter of 2017 and 2018.
Why the smoke smell years later?
Because odor lives in material, not in air.
Treat only the air and it smells better for a week, then a warm afternoon brings it back.
Old construction gives smoke more places to sit: plank subfloor, open framing, blown-in attic. The median build year here is 1971. Removing it is fire and smoke work.
Who did what, when people ask?
Most of it has one answer: the job got finished.
Studs, board, paint, cabinets and floor go back, all by the same company that cut the wall open. It is one written figure, settled at the start.
A rebuild here is not something the law lets anybody sell by the hour. Ask the dispatcher the three that differ.
Where our crews go
A valley of its own behind Ventura, older housing stock, and a roof ordinance that turns a small repair into a whole-roof job faster than anywhere else in the county.
Rather not talk? Write it and we call.
The phone number carries the whole message. What you add only tells us which truck to load and how far it drives.
Ojai is harder to reach than its size suggests, so call at the first sign of water and the nearest crew loads.