Serving Bartow
Wind-Driven Rain Intrusion Bartow, FL
Wind pushes rain sideways through window frames, stucco and the base of the wall. The roof can hold and the house still take water. The walls on the side the wind came from are traced first, at windows, sliders, the base of the wall and the soffits. Block that took on water is dried from inside the closed building rather than left to the outdoor air.
Wet days later? That is worth a call
Often needed alongside
- Humidity & Moisture Drying
When the outdoor air is wetter than the building, opening windows adds water. Drying means a closed building and conditioned air.
- Storm Surge & Tidal Flooding
Surge and tidal water rise from the ground up and carry salt and silt with them. Anything porous they soaked is treated as contaminated.
Frequently asked questions
What wets the floor around the air handler closet in an older Bartow house?
Often the refrigerant lines. In some late-1970s houses with the air handler in an interior closet, the copper lines run under or through the slab to reach it. The larger of the two carries cold gas, and once its foam insulation wears thin it runs colder than the concrete around it, so water forms on it all summer and spreads into the slab and the floor covering nearest the closet.
Can a sunken living room in a Bartow house stay damp?
It can. A late-1970s house with a sunken living room has that floor set a step lower than the rest of the slab, a few inches closer to the soil outside. Through the humid months that lower slab runs cooler and takes up more moisture from below, and the strip along the step, where carpet tack strip and baseboard meet the concrete, is usually where the damp shows first.
What does Bartow's ground mean for a damp slab?
Bartow's center stands about 118 feet above sea level, well above any tide, and the town grew up near the dead-waters of the Peace River in the 1850s. A slab on that higher ground is seldom wet from the sea, so a damp floor is worth tracing first to the cooling system's lines and drain, and to the water supply pipes in the walls nearest it.
Back to Bartow for the housing and weather behind them.