Serving Opa-locka
Humidity & Moisture Drying Opa-locka, FL
When the outdoor air is wetter than the building, opening windows adds water. Drying means a closed building and conditioned air. The building is closed to outdoor air and its air is dehumidified, because in the humid season outside air adds water. Materials are read until they match unaffected material in the same building, including inside block and slab.
Shut off the water, then pick up the phone
Often needed alongside
- AC Condensate & Drain Line Leaks
An air conditioner makes water every day it runs. When its drain clogs or its pan cracks, that water goes into the ceiling or the slab.
- Wind-Driven Rain Intrusion
Wind pushes rain sideways through window frames, stucco and the base of the wall. The roof can hold and the house still take water.
Frequently asked questions
What were Opa-locka's first houses built of?
Concrete block with a stucco finish. The National Register nomination for the city's Moorish Revival buildings describes Bernhardt Muller's houses of the 1920s as a reworking of the flat-roofed concrete block bungalow of the land boom, dressed with domes, minarets, crenelated parapets and rough textured stucco. Block and textured stucco both take up rain, so those walls stay wet longest after a storm.
Why does the terrazzo floor of a ground-floor Opa-locka apartment get slick in summer?
Because it is colder than the air. More than two in five Opa-locka homes are in buildings of ten or more units, many from the late 1960s, and terrazzo laid on a ground-floor slab holds the concrete's coolness. When humid outdoor air comes in through an open door or window, it beads on that cool stone the way it does on a cold glass, leaving a film of water.
Why do the wooden casement windows on an old Opa-locka building stick in the rainy season?
The wood has taken up water. The 1920s buildings were fitted with wooden casement windows set into stuccoed block walls. Where the paint on the sash and sill has worn, rain soaks the wood, and in the humid months it cannot dry out, so it swells against the frame. A sash that no longer closes tight then lets the wet outdoor air in around it.
Opa-locka's own page carries them beside the local figures.