Water Damage Restoration — Black Forest & Falcon
Black Forest is the highest, coldest, most rural part of our coverage, it is almost entirely on wells and septic, and it is the community that lost 486 homes in 2013. All four of those change what a water loss looks like here.
Call (719) 618-9013 — 24/7, someone answers.
- IICRC-certified technicians
- Work to the IICRC S500 standard
- Licensed and insured
- Black Forest, Falcon and rural northeast El Paso County
Colorado Springs
What makes 80908 different from the rest of El Paso County?
Five things, and they compound.
Elevation
Black Forest sits at roughly 7,500 feet — around 1,500 feet above Fountain at the other end of the county, and higher than any other ground in our standard coverage. Colder nights, longer freeze windows, and a heating season that starts earlier and ends later.
No municipal utilities across most of it
water damage Black Forest Colorado homes rely on private wells for water, onsite wastewater treatment systems for sewage. When something fails here, there is no utility to call.
Acreage
water damage Black Forest Colorado claims often involve acreage: lots are measured in acres, not feet. Runoff arrives across your property rather than through a storm system, and the nearest neighbour is not close enough to notice water running.
Soil that behaves differently
water damage Black Forest Colorado soil is rocky granite and clay with a deep water table. Septic designs here are frequently customised to a site-specific soils report rather than pulled off a standard detail — which tells you something about how variable the ground is.
And the fire
In June 2013 this community lost 486 homes. A large share of what stands here now was built after that, on ground that burned.
Coverage
Which communities does this cover?
Black Forest. The core of the zone — heavily treed acreage north and east of the metro, running along Black Forest Road, Shoup Road, Vollmer Road and Burgess Road. Mixed housing eras with a substantial post-2013 rebuild component.
Falcon. East along Highway 24, with a mix of rural acreage and newer subdivision development as growth pushed out from the Powers corridor.
The rural fringe between them — properties that are neither fully Black Forest nor fully Falcon, on wells and septic, with genuinely long access.
Boundary note: 80908 is a large postal delivery area and it does not follow community boundaries. If you are on an edge, call and tell us the cross roads rather than the ZIP.
Colorado Springs
Does the 2013 burn scar still matter?
Yes, and it deserves a straight answer rather than either dismissal or alarm.
What the fire was
The Black Forest Fire was reported on 11 June 2013 and fully contained on 21 June. It burned 14,280 acres, destroyed 486 homes, damaged 37 more, and killed two people. It surpassed the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire in structures lost and became the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history by that measure. It burned entirely within Black Forest and El Paso County.
Why it still affects water thirteen years later
water damage Black Forest Colorado flood risk stays high because intense heat creates a water-repellent layer near the soil surface and destroys the vegetation and root structure that used to slow runoff. Rain that would have soaked in sheets off instead. Recovery of a severely burned watershed is measured in decades, not years — and restoration work on the Black Forest scar has been ongoing since.
What it means for your property specifically
it depends on what is uphill of you and how that ground recovered, and that is a site question rather than a ZIP-code question. Some of this scar has recovered substantially. Some drainages have not. Anyone telling you 80908 is uniformly at risk — or uniformly fine — is not looking at your land.
What we will say plainly
if water arrives across your property during a summer storm and it carries ash, sediment or debris, treat it as Category 3. It is not clean water and it does not get dried and saved.
And the coverage point
standard homeowners policies exclude flood, meaning surface water arriving from outdoors. Post-fire runoff across your land is exactly that. Flood coverage is separate — through the NFIP or a private carrier, with a 30-day waiting period before a new policy takes effect.
We do not determine flood zone status and cannot tell you whether your property is in one. Coverage depends on your specific policy.
The process
What happens when a septic system fails?
It is a Category 3 loss and the protocol is not negotiable.
Onsite wastewater treatment systems in El Paso County are permitted, inspected and regulated by El Paso County Public Health. Since 1 January 2024, permit applications must be submitted by a licensed OWTS installer. Systems here are frequently designed to a site-specific soils report because the granite-and-clay ground is variable enough that a standard detail does not always work.
How failures present:
- Sewage backing up at the lowest fixture in the house — usually a basement floor drain, a laundry sink or a lower-level shower
- Slow drains throughout the house rather than in one fixture
- Wet or unusually green ground over the leach field
- Smell outdoors near the field, particularly after heavy use or heavy rain
What we do, and what we do not
We do the cleanup: containment, protective equipment, HEPA filtration, extraction, removal of porous materials the sewage reached, antimicrobial treatment, and drying to a documented standard. Carpet, pad and drywall the sewage contacted come out. They do not get dried and saved. Anyone telling you otherwise is not working to standard.
We do not pump, repair, design or replace the system
That is a licensed OWTS contractor's work, and it has to happen or the cleanup is pointless — the failure will simply recur.
Two things worth knowing before you need them
know where your tank and leach field actually are, and know when the system was last pumped. Both are things people discover they do not know at exactly the wrong moment. El Paso County OWTS records are viewable through the County Assessor's property search.
Water on the floor right now?
Tell us where it came from and how long it has been there. We will give you a time, not a window.
Call (719) 618-9013Colorado Springs
What about well systems?
A well is a mechanical system, and mechanical systems fail — usually at the worst time.
Where the water comes from when a well property floods:
Pressure tank failure or a bladder rupture
water damage Black Forest Colorado pressure tank failures are sudden, indoors, and often in a utility room or basement
Pump control and pipe failures
water damage Black Forest Colorado pump failures happen in the well house or pump room
Frozen supply lines
water damage Black Forest Colorado frozen supply lines occur between the wellhead and the house, especially where a run crosses unheated space
Water treatment equipment
softeners, filtration and reverse osmosis systems all have connections that let go
And the thing that catches people
when the power goes out, so does your water. A well pump needs electricity. That means no water to flush, no water to clean up with, and — if you are on a septic system with a pump — no way to move waste either.
If you lose power in winter here
For water damage Black Forest Colorado claims, that combination is how a manageable evening becomes a frozen pipe.
What we do not do
test your well, treat your water, or service your pump. Those are separate trades, and El Paso County Public Health handles water testing enquiries. We do the cleanup after a failure and we will tell you plainly when what you need is a pump contractor rather than us.
Why here is different
Why is freeze damage worse at 7,500 feet?
Because the exposure window is longer and the buildings are more spread out.
Burst risk climbs sharply below about 20°F with six or more hours of exposure — and at this elevation those conditions arrive earlier in the season, last longer, and recur more often than they do down in the metro. The Front Range crossing freezing repeatedly in a single day still applies; it just starts from a colder baseline here.
The specific failure points in this zone:
Well houses and pump rooms
water damage Black Forest Colorado well houses are often minimally heated, sometimes not heated at all
Runs between an outbuilding and the house
crossing unheated ground
Barns, workshops and detached garages
water damage Black Forest Colorado outbuildings have plumbing that nobody thinks about until it splits
Crawl spaces
under older rural stock, uninsulated and open to outside air
Second homes and seasonal properties
water damage Black Forest Colorado second-home claims often involve houses standing empty with the heat set low
The empty-property problem is real here. A supply failure in an occupied house is a bucket. On acreage with nobody home and the nearest neighbour a quarter mile away, it runs for days.
If you leave a property here through a cold stretch: keep the heat at 55°F or above rather than off, shut the water off at the main and drain the lines if it will be empty through winter, insulate the well house, open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls, and have someone physically walk it weekly. Then tell your insurer it will be vacant — policies commonly limit or exclude freeze losses in unoccupied dwellings where reasonable heat was not maintained or the water was not shut off.
Colorado Springs
Is post-2013 rebuild construction different?
Better in most respects, with two things worth knowing.
Better: modern supply plumbing rather than anything from the polybutylene era, current insulation and vapour detailing, modern egress, and — in a lot of cases — grading and defensible-space planning done with the fire fresh in mind.
The two catches:
Rebuild-era construction went up fast, at scale, over a compressed period
water damage Black Forest Colorado rebuild-era claims cluster because when several hundred homes are built in the same few years using the same trades and the same details, the defects repeat. That is diagnostically useful rather than alarming — if we have seen the same fitting fail two properties over, we know where to meter first.
Finished lower levels are more common in the rebuild stock
than in the older rural housing it replaced. When water does get in, the loss is bigger.
The pre-fire stock that survived
has its own pattern: older supply lines reaching end of life, crawl spaces rather than basements in the oldest properties, and original well and septic components now well past their design life.
Why here is different
Why does water damage get found so late out here?
Three reasons, and they stack worse than anywhere else in the county.
Dry air hides it
Low ambient humidity pulls moisture off exposed surfaces fast, so drywall faces, carpet and the top of a subfloor feel dry within a day or two while the assembly behind them is still holding water. No condensation, usually no musty smell. How a wall feels is the least reliable indicator available in this climate.
Nobody is close enough to notice
water damage Black Forest Colorado claims often go unnoticed: no shared wall, no neighbour hearing running water, no one seeing a stain through a window. On acreage, a leak in an outbuilding can run unnoticed for weeks.
Crawl spaces and basements nobody visits
Under a rural house or in a well house, water can sit for a long time before anyone has a reason to look.
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, photograph all of it, and give you the readings whether or not we do the reconstruction. A contractor who cannot produce a moisture log is not measuring anything.
Response
How long will it actually take you to get here?
Longer than the metro, and we will give you a real number rather than a hopeful one.
Black Forest and Falcon are a genuine drive. Weather makes it worse — snow on Shoup Road, ice on Vollmer, or a monsoon cell sitting over the corridor all move the number. During a regional storm event, when every crew in southern Colorado is committed, it moves again.
What we commit to instead of a fast-sounding promise:
A real time on the phone
based on where we actually are when you call
Telling you if somebody closer can reach you faster
On acreage with water running, ninety minutes from someone else beats four hours from us, and we will say so
Telling you what to do in the meantime
which on a rural property is usually worth more than the drive time anyway
What you can do before we arrive: shut the water off at the main if the source is inside — on a well system 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. Give us the cross roads, not the ZIP — 80908 is a big area.
Call (719) 618-9013Colorado Springs
A small clean-water release may not need us
Worth saying on a page where the drive alone is substantial.
You can very likely handle it yourself if all of these are true:
- Under roughly 10 square feet
- Clean water from a supply line — not a drain line, not from the septic system, not from outdoors
- Caught within about 24 hours
- On a hard surface, or on carpet you are willing to lift
- Nothing near the electrical panel, the furnace or the water heater
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, it involves the septic system, or it came across the ground from outside.
The process
What happens when you call
- 1
Five questions
For every water damage Black Forest Colorado call: where the water came from — supply, septic, well equipment, or across the ground. How long it has been there. What it has reached. Whether it is still coming in. And whether you are on a well and septic, which changes what comes on the truck.
- 2
A real time, not a hopeful one
With the weather and the road factored in.
- 3
We meter before we quote
including under the floor if there is a crawl space, and you get the readings and the photographic record whether or not we do the reconstruction.
Call (719) 618-9013 — Black Forest, Falcon and rural northeast El Paso County, 24 hours a day.
Call (719) 618-9013FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Black Forest still at risk from the 2013 burn scar?
Recovery from a severe burn is measured in decades, and restoration work on the Black Forest scar has been ongoing since 2013. Whether your specific property is exposed depends on what is uphill of you and how that ground recovered — it is a site question, not a ZIP-code question. What is certain is that runoff carrying ash and sediment is Category 3 water, and that standard homeowners policies exclude it.
Does homeowners insurance cover water running across my land in a storm?
No. Standard homeowners policies exclude flood, which means surface water arriving from outdoors — and that is exactly what post-fire runoff and overland flow are. Flood coverage is separate, through the NFIP or a private carrier, and it carries a 30-day waiting period before a new policy takes effect.
My septic backed up into the basement. What now?
Stop using water in the house, stay out of the affected area, and call. Sewage is Category 3 — it needs containment, protective equipment and HEPA filtration, and porous materials it reached come out rather than being dried. You will also need a licensed OWTS contractor for the system itself; we do the cleanup, not the septic repair, and the cleanup is pointless if the failure is not fixed.
Do you repair wells or septic systems?
No. We do the cleanup after a failure. Well pumps, pressure tanks, water treatment, septic pumping, repair and design are separate licensed trades, and onsite wastewater work in El Paso County requires a licensed OWTS installer for permitted work. We will tell you plainly when what you need is a pump contractor rather than us.
Why do pipes freeze more often out here?
water damage Black Forest Colorado claims come from an area that sits at roughly 7,500 feet, around 1,500 feet above the south end of the county. Burst risk climbs sharply below about 20°F with six or more hours of exposure, and at this elevation those conditions arrive earlier, last longer and recur more often. Well houses, outbuilding runs and uninsulated crawl spaces are where it concentrates.
What do I do about a property that sits empty in winter?
Keep the heat at 55°F or above rather than off, shut the water off at the main and drain the lines if it will be empty through the cold, insulate the well house, open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls, and have someone walk it weekly. Then tell your insurer it will be vacant — policies commonly limit freeze coverage in unoccupied dwellings where heat was not maintained or water was not shut off.
How long does it take you to reach Black Forest?
Longer than the metro, and we give you a real number on the phone rather than an optimistic one. Snow on Shoup Road, ice on Vollmer or an active regional storm all change it. If somebody closer can get to you faster while water is running, we will tell you that instead of taking the job.
Is a post-2013 rebuild home less likely to have water damage?
Its plumbing, insulation and grading are generally better than what it replaced. The two differences worth knowing: rebuild-era construction went up fast and at scale, so defects tend to repeat across a street, and finished lower levels are far more common in the rebuild stock — which means a bigger loss when water does get in.
Call (719) 618-9013 — 24/7, Colorado Springs and El Paso County.
Call (719) 618-9013Black Forest & Falcon Water Damage & Geological Risk Assessment
📍 Coverage Boundaries & Coordinates
ZIP Codes: 80908, 80831
Primary Watershed: Black Squirrel Creek & Upper Monument Creek
Key Subdivisions: Black Forest Reserve, Woodlake, Brentwood, Falcon Highlands, Woodmen Hills, Meridian Ranch
🚒 Arterials & Emergency Dispatch Corridors
Primary Transit Routes: Black Forest Rd, Shoup Rd, Burgess Rd, Meridian Rd, Woodmen Rd, US-24 East, Falcon Hwy
Parks & Landmarks: Black Forest Regional Park, Fox Run Regional Park, Falcon Regional Park, Antler Creek Golf Course, Section 16 Trailhead
Average Response: 45–60 minutes from Central Hub (901 Yuma St).
⛰️ Subsurface Soil Composition & Foundation Hydrodynamics
High-elevation Ponderosa pine plateau overlaying the Dawson Aquifer. Interbedded sandstone and clay layers with shallow perched water tables. Surface soils in fire-affected zones feature hydrophobic ash-crust layers.
🌧️ Historical Flood Incidents & Burn-Scar Weather Precedents
June 2013 Black Forest Fire (511 homes lost, creating massive hydrophobic soil zones prone to hyper-accelerated flash flooding); May 2015 record spring precipitation saturating regional septic drainfields.
⚠️ Building Era Plumbing Failure Modes & Mitigation Focus
Over 85% of rural properties depend on private domestic well pumps and pressure tanks. Well pressure tank diaphragm ruptures, whole-home water filtration line blowouts, and severe sub-zero pipe freezing in crawl spaces (-15°F winter lows).
On-Site Water Emergency in Black Forest & Falcon? Direct line to live on-call IICRC technicians: (719) 618-9013. Dispatching 24/7/365 with thermal imaging cameras, commercial LGR dehumidifiers, and high-velocity structural air movers.