El Cerrito: old stock, and water inside the walls
SOS Restoration of East Bay works El Cerrito, tucked below the ridge north of Berkeley. We clear the water, then rebuild. Bilingual crew, and looking costs nothing. Fully 82 percent of its homes predate 1980. Call (341) 220-0032.
Somebody answers and a van leaves. Looking is on us. CSLB #1131134 · IICRC #70194273
and the van is loaded before the call ends
the whole arc, from the first hour to the last coat
across Alameda and Contra Costa counties
IICRC #70194273
Why does El Cerrito's age dominate?
Few East Bay cities run older than this one, and the plumbing shows it.
Because 82 percent of its homes were built before 1980.
The median El Cerrito home dates to 1956, and one in seven predates 1940. That is old copper, galvanized pipe and lath, so a water job here starts with a sample of the wall.
Who serves El Cerrito's water?
EBMUD for the tap; Stege Sanitary and the city for the sewer.
The East Bay is split among several agencies. El Cerrito draws on EBMUD, and its sewer runs through the city with Stege Sanitary District. Calling the right one keeps the first hour from slipping.
Is there a soft-story rule in El Cerrito?
No. El Cerrito is Contra Costa, which carries none.
The soft-story ordinances belong to Alameda County; Contra Costa has zero. So an El Cerrito permit for the repair skips the retrofit step, and the rebuild is that much simpler.
When can an old house cope alone?
When a spill was caught and the old wall reads dry.
Water mopped in minutes may be finished. We read the framing to be certain. In a house this old, damp hides longer, so that reading matters more.
Who closes an El Cerrito wall?
One crew, drying straight through the rebuild.
No stranger for the second half. IICRC #70194273 covers the drying, CSLB #1131134 the rebuild, fit to a pre-1960 house. Ask the dispatcher what your El Cerrito block needs.
Which side of the sewer is not yours?
The main belongs to the city’s own system. From the property line in, it is yours.
If it surfaced out at the cleanout, ring them before anybody else. Inside the house, once it has risen through a fixture, is where we start.
A 1956 house. What does that change?
A great deal. Only 11,247 homes here, and 82 percent were up before 1980.
That is old stock by any measure. Plaster, joint compound and sheet flooring from those decades all carry questions, so the laboratory goes first.
The fault runs under the city. So?
It changes what it takes to close a wall, not what it takes to dry one.
Drying is drying. The rebuild is where the seismic detail shows up, and that is written into the permit rather than into the machines.
Water damage
Mold
Fire & smoke
Storm damage
Sewage cleanup
Reconstruction
Reconstruction
Where our crews go
A hill town north of Berkeley, steep streets and a lot of houses on posts. Water comes off the slope rather than out of the sky, and it finds the downhill neighbor first.
Rather write it than talk? Leave it here and we call you back.
The number is the part that matters. The rest just tells us which crew to send and how far up the road they are going.
Old El Cerrito pipe hides its water, so read the wall early. Dial (341) 220-0032 and a crew heads over.
Sewage, storm damage, mold, fire and smoke, water, and the reconstruction that follows them, for Oakland and the twenty-four East Bay cities around it. Any hour, any day. Se habla español.