Santa Ana was founded in 1869 and has been the county seat since 1889, and it is the oldest big city in Orange County by housing stock. Downtown and the neighborhoods around it, Floral Park, French Park, Washington Square, hold Craftsman, Spanish, and Tudor houses from the 1900s through the 1930s on raised foundations with crawl spaces. Around that core the 1940s and 1950s tracts fill the flats to the Garden Grove and Orange lines, slab ranches on small lots, many of them now with a second unit in the back. The Santa Ana River runs along the west side of the city in its channel.
When the river broke out in March 1938 it hit Santa Ana harder than anywhere else in the county, and the memory of it is why the channel is as deep as it is. The river has stayed put since Prado Dam. The hundred-year-old galvanized and cast-iron pipes under Floral Park have not.
This site connects Santa Ana homeowners and landlords with an independent local water damage provider by phone. The provider puts a meter on the walls before putting anything on paper.
A 1925 Craftsman with a soft dining room floor and a damp crawl space is a leak detection call that starts under the house. A 1952 slab ranch near McFadden with a pinhole in a hot line is slab leak cleanup once the plumber is done. A cast-iron drain shared by the front house and the back unit that backed up into both is sewer backup cleanup with two households in the loop.
Bowers Museum on Main Street opened in 1936 in a Mission Revival building two years before the flood and has the county's largest collection of its own history. Rebuild permits for plumbing, drywall, or wiring go through the City of Santa Ana building counter at the civic center, and a contributing house in one of the historic districts gets a planning look for anything that shows outside.
Call (657) 239-3689 and tell us which room is wet. An independent local water damage provider serving Santa Ana picks it up from there.
Standing water pulled off tile, carpet pad, and the concrete slab under them, followed by the first meter readings at every wall base.
Air movers and dehumidifiers run against daily readings until slab, studs, and drywall come back to dry in a closed-up Anaheim house.
The warm tile, the spinning meter, and the damp carpet traced to a pipe under the slab or inside a wall before anyone opens concrete.
Cleanup after hard water pitted a copper line under the slab, with the soaked flooring, cabinet bases, and lower drywall dried or removed.
Mud and street water pumped out of a garage or living room after an atmospheric river, and everything it touched sorted for drying or disposal.
Drying after a tank in the garage or a hallway closet let go, including the drywall behind the stand and the rooms on the other side of it.
Removal of water that came up through a shower drain or toilet from an aging cast-iron line, with contaminated flooring and drywall handled as such.
Attic insulation, ceilings, and walls dried after wind-driven winter rain found a cracked tile or a failed flashing on a north county roof.