Water, Mold and Smoke Damage Restoration in Valley Village

Valley Village spent decades as the southern part of North Hollywood before it had its own name on the map. In December 1985 about 300 homeowners met at Colfax Avenue Elementary to push back against what they called stucco mountains of new apartments, and in 1991 the city put up seven blue markers at the borders. The neighborhood council draws it from Burbank Boulevard down to the Ventura Freeway, and from the Tujunga Wash east to the Hollywood Freeway.

The apartments got built anyway. A 2006 count put the neighborhood at 3,881 single-family homes, 1,073 condominiums and 8,213 apartment units, and in the 2000 census about 69 percent of housing units were rented. Condos and apartments line the main boulevards. The side streets hold smaller houses, most of them single-story, some going back to the 1930s, when workers from the nearby film studios built homes here.

Those two kinds of housing produce two kinds of call. In a stacked apartment building, a washing machine hose or a water heater that fails on the third floor shows up in a second-floor ceiling the next morning and keeps moving through shared walls. We trace the water to its source, check every unit it could have reached, and keep a separate photo and moisture record for each unit number. If you rent, tell the manager in writing so there is a dated record.

On the side streets the loss spreads out instead of down. A single-story house puts its plumbing under one roof and one floor, so a supply line under the kitchen or a hot water line leaking under the slab can wet several rooms before anyone notices. Older raised-floor houses hold water in the crawlspace. We take readings in the floor, the baseboards and underneath before deciding where the drying equipment goes.

Water also comes up from the street. Before dawn on September 8, 2009, a main broke near Hartsook Street and Bellingham Avenue, south of Magnolia Boulevard, and a fire engine responding to the call drove into the sinkhole it opened. The crew of four got out before the 22-ton engine sank in. The affected pipe had gone in back in 1969. Water from a break like that crosses streets and yards before it reaches a house, so it is cleaned and disinfected before drying begins.

The Tujunga Wash on the western edge is a concrete channel that carries runoff from Hansen Dam down to the Los Angeles River. For most houses the rain risk is closer to home: clogged gutters, a driveway that slopes toward the garage, or a yard graded toward the foundation. Rainwater that comes in from outside is treated as contaminated.

Summers here run hot. The neighborhood's recorded high is 117 degrees, set on September 6, 2020, and air conditioners work hard for months. A clogged condensate line or a rusted drain pan on an attic or closet unit can drip into a ceiling for weeks, and the first sign is a stain or a musty smell. Mold follows water that sat, so we find the wet area with moisture meters and thermal imaging, handle mold under containment with HEPA filtration, and tell you plainly what we found.

Smoke reaches the Valley from fires in the surrounding hills, and an apartment kitchen fire can push soot into hallways and neighboring units. We clean soot from surfaces and contents, treat the odor that stays behind, and pack out belongings with an itemized, photographed inventory when they need to be cleaned off site.

On insurance, we keep the record your carrier will ask for: photos taken before anything moves, moisture readings, daily drying logs and an estimate of our own scope. We can bill your carrier directly for our services, and coverage questions stay with your carrier, your agent or a public adjuster you hire. Our IICRC-certified technicians respond anywhere in Los Angeles, Orange County and Riverside around the clock, in English and Spanish, and the first inspection is free.