Monument is a separate town with its own water utility and its own sanitation districts. If you have a water emergency here, most of the advice written for Colorado Springs — including who to call about the main — does not apply to you.
Water damage
A region of northern El Paso County named for three lakes — Monument Lake, Palmer Lake and Lake Woodmoor.
It includes:
Boundary note: Tri-Lakes is a regional name rather than a jurisdictional one, and 80132 does not follow town lines. If you are in Gleneagle or on the southern edge, call with the cross roads rather than the ZIP — you may be better served by our Briargate & Northgate coverage.
Colorado Springs
Because three of the things you would normally look up are different here, and one is not.
Your water utility is not Colorado Springs Utilities. The Town of Monument operates and maintains its own water system — 10 wells and treatment facilities. Palmer Lake’s supply comes from reservoirs in the mountains behind the town and from wells. If you have a break in the service line or a question about the main, you call your town, not CSU.
Your wastewater goes to a district, not a city system. The Tri-Lakes Wastewater Treatment Facility is jointly owned by Palmer Lake Sanitation District, Monument Sanitation District and Woodmoor Sanitation District. Which district serves you depends on where you are.
Parts of the area are on private wells and septic entirely — the unincorporated fringe, King’s Deer, and larger-lot properties outside district service.
But your building department is the same one. The Pikes Peak Regional Building Department issues permits for unincorporated El Paso County, the cities of Colorado Springs, Fountain and Manitou Springs, and the towns of Green Mountain Falls, Monument and Palmer Lake. So when you are checking whether a restoration contractor is licensed for permitted work, PPRBD is the same authority here as in Colorado Springs. That is genuinely useful and almost nobody knows it.
Why we are making a point of this: most restoration content written for “Colorado Springs” quietly assumes CSU, city stormwater and city processes. On a water emergency in Monument, that advice sends you to the wrong phone number. A contractor who does not know your utility is not local to you.
Water damage
Cold is the dominant factor, and it is a real step change from the metro.
Monument sits meaningfully higher than Colorado Springs, and the Tri-Lakes area sits higher again toward Palmer Lake and the Rampart Range. Colder nights, a longer heating season, deeper frost exposure and more snow load than the city sees. Burst risk climbs sharply below about 20°F with six or more hours of exposure — and those conditions arrive earlier here, last longer, and recur more often.
Where it concentrates:
Beyond freeze:
Snow load and ice damming. More snow, more melt-freeze cycling at the roof edge, and ice dams forcing water back up under shingles and into the structure. That is a roof-and-attic loss that shows up as a ceiling stain days later.
Spring snowmelt. A heavier snowpack releasing into ground that is still frozen sheds rather than absorbs — and it arrives at foundations, window wells and walkouts.
Monsoon storms, mid-July to mid-September, same as the rest of the county.
Colorado Springs
This is the highest-value section on this page, because Tri-Lakes has an unusual concentration of second homes and seasonal properties and this is where its worst losses come from.
A supply failure in an occupied house is a bucket and a phone call. In an empty house at this elevation it runs for days.
Before you leave:
And tell your insurer the property will be vacant. Homeowners policies commonly limit or exclude freeze losses in vacant or unoccupied dwellings where reasonable heat was not maintained or the water was not shut off. A large claim can become a large bill on exactly that clause. Read your policy’s vacancy and freeze provisions before you go rather than after.
Coverage depends on your specific policy. We are a restoration contractor, not licensed insurance advisers.
Tell us where it came from and how long it has been there. We will give you a time, not a window.
24/7 — Colorado Springs and El Paso County
Water damage
Three things.
A well is a mechanical system. Pump, pressure tank, distribution, often treatment — and each part fails. When the power goes out, so does your water, which at this elevation in winter is how a manageable evening becomes a frozen pipe.
Septic failure is a Category 3 loss. Containment, protective equipment, HEPA filtration, extraction, and removal rather than drying for porous materials the sewage reached. Onsite wastewater treatment systems in El Paso County are permitted, inspected and regulated by El Paso County Public Health, and since 1 January 2024 permit applications must be submitted by a licensed OWTS installer.
Runoff arrives across property rather than through an engineered storm system.
What we do not do: test wells, treat water, service pumps, or pump, repair, design or replace septic systems. Those are separate licensed trades. We do the cleanup after a failure and we will say plainly when what you need is a pump or septic contractor instead of us. Cleanup without fixing the underlying failure just buys you a repeat.
Colorado Springs
Your governing documents decide where association responsibility ends and yours begins, and that line is not standard across communities.
Find your documents before you need them, and notify the association in writing whenever a loss involves anything shared or any adjacent unit.
What we do: document which units and areas were affected, and when — one shared record, so the parties are not arguing from three different memories.
Water damage
Five things, and the fourth is the one that is different here.
1. Shut the water off at the main if the source is inside the building. In this housing stock it is commonly in the basement on the front foundation wall where the service line enters, or in a utility room. On a private well, that may mean killing power to the pump instead. Find yours now rather than at 2 a.m. in a cold house.
2. Cut power to the affected area at the breaker — only if the panel is dry and you can reach it safely. If you cannot, leave it and tell us when you call.
3. Photograph everything before you move it. Ninety seconds. It is the evidence your claim rests on and it is destroyed by the act of cleaning up.
4. If the problem is outside the building — the main, the service line, the meter — call your town, not Colorado Springs Utilities. The Town of Monument runs its own water system. Palmer Lake runs its own. CSU is not your utility and cannot help you, and the time spent finding that out is time water is running. If you are on a private well, there is no utility to call at all — the whole system is yours.
5. Call (719) 618-9013.
Then, while you wait: get what you can up off the floor — furniture legs stain carpet permanently and cardboard wicks water upward. Open cabinet doors and vanity kickboards near the affected area so enclosed cavities can breathe. Point a fan across the wet area at a low angle rather than straight down at it.
And one thing not to do in a cold house: do not crank the heat up high without dehumidification present. Warm air holds far more moisture, and driving evaporation with nowhere for the moisture to go pushes it into cold exterior walls and unheated cavities, where it condenses. At this elevation in winter that means relocating your problem into the coldest part of the building.
Do not enter standing water that came from a septic system or from outdoors.
Colorado Springs
Because dry air hides it and cold slows the signal.
Low ambient humidity pulls moisture off exposed surfaces fast. Drywall faces, carpet and the top of a subfloor read dry within a day or two while the assembly behind them is still holding water. No condensation, usually no musty smell, because the moisture is not reaching the room. How a wall feels is the least reliable indicator available in this climate.
And cold assemblies dry slowly and signal late. An unheated crawl space, a north-facing exterior wall or a cold attic above an ice dam will hold moisture for a long time before anything appears in the room below. That is also why drying takes longer here than in the metro — evaporation slows as temperature drops, and desiccant dehumidification is frequently the right call in this zone between November and March where refrigerant machines lose efficiency.
What we do instead of guessing: meter against unaffected material of the same type in the same building, go into the crawl space rather than reasoning about it from above, and give you the readings whether or not we do the reconstruction. A contractor who cannot produce a moisture log is not measuring anything.
Water damage
Monument and Tri-Lakes are north of the metro and it is a genuine drive. You get a real number on the phone, based on where we actually are when you call — not an optimistic one.
Two honest qualifiers specific to this run:
Weather on I-25 north changes everything. Ice, snow and closures between the metro and the Tri-Lakes exit move the number substantially, and this zone gets weather the city does not.
During a regional event, everyone is committed. When a hail cell or a monsoon flood hits the Front Range, every crew in southern Colorado is working at once. If somebody closer can reach you faster while water is running, we will tell you that rather than take the job and leave you waiting.
Before we arrive: shut the water off at the main if the source is inside — on a private well that may mean killing power to the pump. Photograph everything before you move it. Get what you can up off the floor. Do not enter standing water that came from a septic system or from outdoors.
Call (719) 618-9013. Tell us the cross roads and whether you are in town, in a district, or on a well and septic.
📞 Call (719) 618-9013Colorado Springs
Worth saying where the drive is long.
You can very likely handle it yourself if all of these are true:
Pull the carpet back, get the pad out, run a fan across the area at a low angle rather than straight down, put a dehumidifier in the room with the door closed, and check it in 48 hours.
Call if it still feels damp after two days, a musty smell develops, it reached drywall or insulation, it went under a cabinet run, or it was anything other than clean supply water.
Water damage
Call (719) 618-9013 — Monument, Palmer Lake, Woodmoor and Gleneagle, 24 hours a day.
📞 Call (719) 618-9013Frequently asked
IICRC-certified. We meter before we quote, and you get the readings.
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