Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
Water Damage Restoration in Northport, AL
Northport has the county's oldest downtown and its newest subdivisions within four miles of each other, and the two fail in opposite ways. One has plumbing under an open floor; the other has it buried in a slab.
What water damage looks like in Northport
Drive north out of the old downtown on Highway 43 and the houses get newer by the mile. That drive is also a timeline of how plumbing was installed here: supply lines under an open floor where you can see them and reach them, then supply lines inside stud walls, then supply lines cast into a slab. Each step made the pipe less likely to freeze and considerably harder to find on the day it fails.
Downtown Northport and the Kentuck blocks hold the county's oldest surviving commercial fabric, some of it rebuilt after the 1932 tornado went through. Brick and mortar take water up into themselves rather than shedding it, so a failed line in one of those buildings still reads wet a week after the floor feels dry to the hand. The unit next door usually needs checking as well, because in a row like that the floor structure does not stop at the party wall.
Lake Tuscaloosa shoreline property adds a category the rest of the county has little of. These are buildings used at weekends, on private drives, with the water left on and the thermostat left where it was. Nothing about the failure itself is unusual; the interval before discovery is. As for the river, 1951 and 1979 are still what people mean by flooding in this town, but with the dams and levees in place it is Carroll's Creek and the storm drains that actually put water into Northport buildings now.
The building stock
Northport splits sharply. The old downtown and Bellwood are pre-war frame and brick on crawl spaces, close to the river and close together. North along Highway 43 and out toward Lake Tuscaloosa it is recent subdivision construction on slab, some of it only a few years old, plus lake property that is occupied unevenly.
Weather and water
The 1932 tornado tore through downtown Northport, and the town flooded from the Black Warrior in 1951 and again in 1979. River flooding is far rarer now that the dams and levees are in place, and what actually reaches buildings today is creek flash flooding after heavy rain.
The short version
- County
- Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
- ZIP codes
- 35473, 35475, 35476
- From Tuscaloosa
- About 4 miles
- Drains toward
- the Black Warrior River, Carroll's Creek and Lake Tuscaloosa
- Utilities
- Northport Water and Sewer
- Dispatch
- (205) 927-8756
A typical Northport job
Under the floor in Bellwood
A compression fitting under the kitchen of a pre-war frame house lets go on a Sunday. Nothing shows in the room. The water drops straight through the board subfloor and collects on a sheet of plastic laid across the crawl space years ago, which then holds it in place. The owner notices a soft give in the floor by the sink the following weekend. Underneath, the batts between the joists are soaked and hanging, the old barrier comes out with them, and the subfloor is dried from below with the space closed off and a dehumidifier working in it.
What decides the size of a Northport job
Lake Tuscaloosa property adds a third pattern on top of those two: houses used at weekends, where a failure is found whenever somebody next drives out rather than within the hour.
How the work runs, start to finish →
Before we arrive: what to do in the first fifteen minutes.
Areas of Northport
- Downtown Northport
- Bellwood
- the Kentuck district
- Watermelon Road
- Highway 43 north
- Lake Tuscaloosa shoreline