Water damage restoration in North Texas

Housing, soil and permits

Most DFW houses are slab-on-grade over expansive clay, the Blackland Prairie soil that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. That movement is behind many slab leaks and cracked drain lines. Older neighborhoods near the urban cores, such as parts of Dallas, Fort Worth, McKinney and Denton, still have pier-and-beam houses with crawl spaces, where leaks pool under the floor instead of spreading across a slab.

Housing age varies a lot by town. Inner-ring suburbs such as Garland, Mesquite, Richardson and Irving grew in the 1950s through 1970s, so galvanized supply lines and cast iron drains are common. Plano, Arlington, Carrollton and Lewisville boomed in the 1970s and 1980s, which overlaps the polybutylene era (roughly 1978 to 1995). Frisco, north Fort Worth, Keller and McKinney's newer areas are mostly PEX-plumbed houses from the 2000s on, often two stories with laundry rooms upstairs.

Texas does not license general contractors or water damage restoration companies at the state level. Plumbers are licensed by the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, electricians by TDLR, and mold assessors and remediators by TDLR for projects of 25 contiguous square feet or more. Building permits come from each city, not the county. Texas law also bars contractors from waiving your insurance deductible or acting as your public adjuster.

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