Water, Sewage and Mold Damage Restoration in Venice

The sewage from the whole coastal side of Los Angeles passes through Venice. The Venice Pumping Plant on Hurricane Street is the largest wastewater pumping plant in the city, and it sends that flow to the Hyperion plant in Playa del Rey. A 2008 city report found that its 48-inch force main, laid in 1958, could carry only about 60 percent of what the plant can pump with all five pumps running, and that during the storms of the 1994-95 and 2004-05 winters the excess came within minutes of spilling into Ballona Lagoon. The city approved a second, 54-inch line that year.

That history is the reason a Venice storm call is often a sewage call. When the system is full, wastewater looks for the lowest opening it can find, and in a house that is a floor drain, a ground-floor shower or the lowest toilet. Water that comes up that way is a health hazard from the first minute. We contain the area, extract it, remove porous materials that cannot be disinfected, clean and disinfect what stays, and only then start drying, with protective equipment the whole time.

The canals are the other half of Venice's relationship with water. Kinney opened his Venice of America in 1905 with canals dredged out of salt marsh, and in 1929 most of them were filled and paved for cars. Six survive: Carroll, Linnie, Howland and Sherman running east to west, Eastern and Grand running north to south. Their water is tidal, let in from the Marina del Rey channel through Ballona Lagoon and gates at Washington Boulevard, and the city drained and restored them in 1992 and 1993.

Homes along the canals front on footpaths, not streets, and so do the houses on Venice's walk streets, the historic pedestrian lanes such as Marco Place where the front door faces a garden path and the nearest curb is down the block. That changes how a job starts. Extractors, air movers and dehumidifiers are carried in by hand, hoses run a long way, and parking is hard. Tell us on the call how the house is reached and where the nearest curb is, and we plan the equipment and the crew around it.

Most calls are still ordinary leaks. A water heater lets go in a garage, a supply line bursts behind a toilet, a washing machine hose splits, or the first heavy rain finds a gap around a skylight in an older bungalow. That water starts clean, and speed decides how much of the house it reaches. Where a house sits on a raised floor, the water that slips under it stays in the crawlspace, so we read the framing underneath as well as the rooms above.

Lots in Venice are narrow and houses stand close, often a front house with a unit or studio behind it. Water does not respect a property line. A leak in the back unit can wet the shared wall of the front house, and runoff from one roof lands against the next. We follow the water wherever it went, record every room it reached, and keep the readings for each building separate so two owners and two carriers can each see their part.

Venice also runs on its businesses, from the shops and restaurants on Abbot Kinney Boulevard to the storefronts along Ocean Front Walk. A business with water on the floor needs its public space first, so we contain the wet area, reopen what is safe soonest and schedule the loud work around your hours. The daily moisture logs and photos are written for a landlord and a carrier to read.

Onshore air and morning fog keep a beach neighborhood damp, and a wall that stays wet near the coast gives mold more time than it gets inland. Mold usually follows water that sat for days, behind a vanity, under a sink or inside a closet against an exterior wall. We handle mold under containment with HEPA filtration and tell you plainly what we found and where. If water came up from a drain, do not run fixtures in the house, keep people and pets out of it, and photograph everything before it moves.

On insurance, we document the loss with photos, moisture readings and daily drying logs, estimate our own scope of work, and can bill your carrier directly for our services. Whether a sewer backup or a storm loss is covered is a question for your carrier, your agent or a public adjuster you hire. We respond anywhere in Los Angeles, Orange County and Riverside around the clock, our technicians hold IICRC certifications in water damage restoration and microbial remediation, we work in English and Spanish, and the first inspection is free.