What water damage work costs in the East Bay
Mitigation from SOS Restoration of East Bay is sold by the hour, not the square foot. Nobody can say on the phone how far the water moved inside a wall. The rebuild works the other way: one written total, agreed before the saw.
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 bill by the hour?
Because a flat quote is a number invented before seeing the house.
A flat quote for drying is a guess with a margin built in. You pay the margin whether the job needed it or not.
A floor wet yesterday and the same floor wet nine days ago look identical and are different jobs. One is two days of air. The other is cabinets out, subfloor out, and a lab reading the toe-kick.
What never hits the invoice?
The visit that tells you whether you have a problem.
A call to the dispatcher sends someone to read the meters. They say what the readings say. If the slab is dry and the chill is just a cold floor, that is the visit. There is no bill behind it.
We would rather be wrong for an hour than leave you wondering for a week. The readings get written down, which matters if a carrier later asks when it started.
What moves the number up?
Time, category and access, in that order.
Time is the one you can still change. Category is what the water was when it arrived. A supply line is clean, a dishwasher is gray, a drain backup goes to the top rate. Access is the quiet one.
Two East Bay facts change the math. In the seven Alameda County cities with a soft-story rule, drying works around a permitted retrofit. Where the median house predates 1980, the asbestos lab result comes on its own schedule, not ours.
Does the rebuild run on this rate?
No. Reconstruction is one written figure, not an hourly rate.
That is California law. The dollar figure goes in the contract you sign. You will not find a reconstruction price on this site. What moves it is on the rebuild-cost page. If a carrier is involved, the claim page covers that side.
Some wet floors are not a job
A glass of water on tile, found today, is a towel.
Odd for a pricing page to say, and still true. A same-day spill on a hard floor wants air and patience. A line still feeding water needs the plumber first; we are the next call.
If the only symptom is a climbing bill with nothing showing, you want leak detection. When it is a real job, it is the drying, then the build-back. That runs on one file, across the East Bay. CSLB #1131134 · IICRC #70194273.
Is the first visit really free?
Yes, including the drive and the readings, across both counties.
A dry number ends the visit with nothing owed and the reading left with you. Roughly half of what we are called to turns out that way.
What sits on our side of the bill?
The travel, the survey and the paperwork your carrier asks us to produce.
Those are the cost of running this properly. Crew hours and machine days are what move an invoice, and both are logged where you can see them.
Why two different ways of pricing?
Drying is metered. A rebuild is measured once and written down.
The first is billed against hours because the readings decide when it stops. The second carries a signed total, because state law requires the figure in dollars.
What does an hour of water work cost?
Four starting rates, set by what the job actually is.
The label is not marketing. It is what the work is.
- Water damage restoration, the drying half of the job, starts at $61 an hour
- Water damage repair, source and room set right as one job, starts at $69 an hour
- Water damage cleanup, including flood damage restoration, starts at $79 an hour
- Emergency call-out, and every fire, smoke, soot, mold, storm or sewage job, starts at $90 an hour
These are starting rates. What a job comes to depends on how far the water spread and how long it sat.
Water damage
Mold
Fire & smoke
Storm damage
Sewage cleanup
Reconstruction
Reconstruction
The cities we drive to for this work
Our rate card reads the same in Fremont as it does in Antioch. The address decides the rest: which building department signs off, what year the framing went in, and how much of the drive is bridge and tunnel.
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.
Water readings first, then a number you can check. Call (341) 220-0032 and the dispatcher sends someone to read the meters, which costs nothing whether or not it turns into a job. If typing is easier, the form reaches the same desk.
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.