Hercules: a company town, and water from newer pipe
Hercules is a factory town that outlived its factory. SOS Restoration of East Bay extracts the water and rebuilds the damage. We work in English and Spanish, and we charge nothing to look. Almost every house went up after 1970. 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
What does the city's factory past change?
Hercules built itself all at once, on the ground of an explosives plant.
Newer houses, but built over old industrial ground.
California Powder Works opened here in 1879 and made dynamite under the Hercules brand. The town stayed tiny until suburban tract housing arrived in the 1970s. That is why the stock is new and the soil has a history.
Newer stock. So why does Hercules flood inside?
A hose or a fitting, rarely the pipe’s age.
Only 16 percent of Hercules’s 9,581 homes predate 1980. Age is seldom the cause here. The water usually comes from a supply line, a water heater, or an upstairs bath. That is a water job.
Which water and sewer agencies serve Hercules?
EBMUD for water; the Pinole–Hercules plant for sewage.
The East Bay has five water agencies, and Hercules is on EBMUD. Its sewage shares the Pinole–the town treatment plant next door. We ring the right two so nothing waits on the wrong desk.
When does a call here need no crew?
When the spill was small and dried on its own.
New framing forgives a fast cleanup. A spill you caught in minutes may need only a meter check of the wall. Dry behind, and we say the job is yours, not ours.
Who rebuilds a house here?
The drying team carries it through the rebuild.
No stranger takes the finish. IICRC #70194273 signs the drying and CSLB #1131134 signs the rebuild, fit to a home from the late 1980s. Ask the dispatcher what your Hercules block needs.
What is not ours on an old works site?
Anything buried from the dynamite years is not a restoration job.
The town was a company town built around the California Powder Works. What sits under the ground belongs to another specialty entirely, and we say so.
A 1988 house. Anything to sample?
Little. Hercules has 9,581 homes and almost none of them are pre-war.
On this stock the questions move to fittings and appliance lines. That is a faster loss to dry and a cheaper one to close.
Where does the sewage go?
To the Pinole and here plant, which the two towns share.
EBMUD supplies the water. Two agencies, and ringing the right one first decides whether the line gets cleared this morning or not.
Water damage
Mold
Fire & smoke
Storm damage
Sewage cleanup
Reconstruction
Reconstruction
Where our crews go
The old powder works turned into a planned town, so most of the housing went up in a few waves and shares the same plumbing. When one water heater lets go, its neighbors are usually next.
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.
Even a young Hercules house springs a leak, so call before it spreads. Dial (341) 220-0032 for the nearest crew.
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.