What happens to buildings
here, and why
Everything we have written down about water, heat, dust and storms in {{MAIN_AREA}}, arranged by the time of year you are most likely to need it.
Answered by a person 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Damage in this valley runs on a calendar. Supply lines and slabs fail all year, the roof and the ground fail between June and September, and closed houses fail in July while nobody is standing in them.
The four groups below follow that calendar, and the numbering runs straight through them.
If water is moving
right now
There are two of these, and they are the only pages worth opening while something is actively wet. Both are written to be followed rather than read, and the first step in each is different, which is the whole reason there are two.
-
01
What to do in the first hour after a leak
Six things in order, from the main shut off to the photographs, plus what the water is doing under the tile while you wait.
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02
When the drains back up
The one water loss where the first move is to keep everybody out of the room, and the one most often excluded from the policy.
Monsoon season,
June to September
The North American Monsoon runs from the middle of June to the end of September, and it delivers three separate things that damage buildings: outflow winds at 40 to 60 miles an hour, rain intense enough that dry ground refuses it, and dust ahead of both. A storm here is over in forty minutes and can leave four distinct problems behind it, on the roof, at the threshold, in the ductwork and across the yard.
The insurance shape of this season is worth learning before the season starts. Wind damage is generally covered. Water that arrives across the ground is generally not, because that is flood, and flood is a separate policy that takes thirty days to take effect.
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03
Monsoon season
What the season is, what actually arrives, the shape of it month by month, and what to do about the property in May.
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04
Why desert homes take on water in August
Dry soil and caliche hardpan shed water instead of absorbing it, so most of an inch of rain becomes surface flow within minutes, moving toward the lowest door in the neighbourhood.
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05
Why a house nowhere near water takes on water
Sheet flow on the alluvial fans along the western edge of the valley: shallow unconfined water crossing a broad apron, what FEMA Zone AO means, and why a quarter of paid flood claims sit outside high risk zones.
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06
What happens when the tiles move
A concrete tile roof is a rain shield and a sunshade. The underlayment beneath it is the waterproofing, and it is often at the end of its life at around twenty years.
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07
What the dust gets into
Where fine mineral dust enters a closed house, what it does to an air handler, and why the rain that follows an hour later is what turns it into damage.
Emergencies
It is also not the place emergencies are handled. Dispatch runs through the branch page and through the phone below, which is answered by a person at any hour rather than by a form. If something is wet right now, that is the faster route, and the reading can happen later.
Through the summer
Two things define a Phoenix summer inside a building. Equipment that carries water sits above the ceiling rather than below the floor, so when it fails it drains into the living space. And a large number of houses are closed and empty for months at exactly the point in the year when interior temperatures and supply line pressure are both at their worst.
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08
The house nobody is in
Closing a seasonal house properly, what fails while it is shut, the difference between vacant and unoccupied in a policy, and how to open it again in the right order.
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09
The unit on the roof and the line that drains it
Evaporative coolers and rooftop air conditioning sit above the ceiling. Condensate lines block with dust and algae, and the water goes somewhere.
All year
Some of it has nothing to do with the season. Slab on grade construction means water spreads sideways under tile instead of draining down, hard water works on copper supply lines bedded in concrete year round, and the clock that decides whether a wet building becomes a mold problem runs at the same speed in February as in August.
-
10
The 48 hour window
Mold needs moisture, a food source and time. Paper faced drywall supplies two of the three, and the window before growth establishes is usually put at 24 to 48 hours.
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11
Under the slab
Slab leaks, what hard water and soil chemistry do to copper, how a leak under concrete announces itself, and why a post-tension slab must never be cut without locating the tendons.
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12
Questions and answers
Twenty questions about claims, drying, mold, equipment, and what any of the answers actually depend on.
What this library is,
and what it is not
It is an explanation of what is happening to a building. Why water under a tile floor reaches three walls in an hour, why a ceiling stains a month after the wind that caused it, why a policy treats a burst supply line and a flooded street as different events. Most of it is the kind of thing a technician explains standing in somebody’s hallway, written down once so that it can be read before the hallway is wet.
It is not a substitute for having somebody look at the building. Nothing here tells you whether your wall is dry, because that is a question a moisture meter answers and a web page cannot. Where a page says the policy is the authority, that is meant literally: the numbers, the periods and the endorsements vary by carrier, and yours is the one that counts.
- 01
Is the wall dry
A moisture meter answers that, standing in the room. Nothing written here can.
- 02
What is covered
Your own policy is the authority, and the endorsements on it decide more than the general shape does.
If you would rather ask somebody than read about it, that is what the phone is for.
Answered by a person 24 hours a day
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