Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
Water Damage Restoration in Duncanville, AL
Duncanville is where the city's southern growth runs out and the county begins, and the housing on either side of that line needs completely different work when it gets wet.
What water damage looks like in Duncanville
Highway 69 south functions as a line rather than a road as far as this work goes. On the city side of it there is newer construction on slab, public sewer and hydrant coverage. A mile further out there are houses on piers, private drives, well water and septic tanks. Two calls on the same afternoon from addresses six minutes apart can need entirely different equipment, and the address on its own does not tell you which one you are driving to.
Septic matters more here than most people expect, and it matters most after several days of rain. A saturated drain field has nowhere to send what the house sends it, so the system backs up the way it came in. Water that has been through a septic tank is contaminated the moment it reaches the room, not after it has sat there. Carpet, pad, underlayment and any drywall that wicked it up leave the building rather than being dried and put back, and that conversation is harder because the water often looks like nothing much.
The 2011 storm came into the county from this direction and people here watch the sky accordingly. The everyday version is smaller and wetter than that. Big Sandy Creek and the low ground either side of Duncanville Road take standing water after a heavy rain, and the houses on piers above them take it into the floor framing rather than the living room. Almost nobody calls about a crawl space on the day it happens. They call about the smell three weeks afterward.
The building stock
Rural south-county housing: older frame houses on piers, a substantial amount of manufactured housing, and newer construction filling in along Highway 69 as Tuscaloosa spreads south.
Weather and water
The 2011 tornado's approach into the city came in from this direction, which is why storm awareness runs high here. Day to day, the more common problem is creek flash flooding on the low ground after a heavy rain.
The short version
- County
- Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
- ZIP codes
- 35456
- From Tuscaloosa
- About 12 miles
- Drains toward
- Big Sandy Creek, Hurricane Creek and the Black Warrior River
- Utilities
- county water systems and private wells
- Dispatch
- (205) 927-8756
A typical Duncanville job
When the drain field has nowhere to go
A wet week ends with a bathroom floor that will not drain, and then with water coming back up through the shower pan. The field has been saturated for days and the tank has nowhere to send anything. What reaches the floor looks like dishwater and behaves like sewage. Everything porous it touched leaves the building — carpet, pad, the lower band of drywall, the vinyl and the underlayment beneath it. What stays gets cleaned and treated before a single dehumidifier is switched on. People are usually surprised by how much comes out and how little of the work is drying.
What decides the size of a Duncanville job
Septic systems matter here. A backup into a house on septic is Category 3 water, and no amount of drying makes contaminated material safe to keep.
How the work runs, start to finish →
Before we arrive: what to do in the first fifteen minutes.
Areas of Duncanville
- Highway 69 south
- Duncanville Road
- Taylorville edge