South El Paso County has three water damage problems the rest of the metro does not: houses standing empty through a PCS cycle in freeze season, the lowest ground in the region sitting on Fountain Creek, and — on post — a housing operator between you and the repair.
Water damage
Four ZIP codes and four genuinely different situations.
80911 — Security-Widefield. Post-war through modern residential, served by Security Water District and Widefield Water and Sanitation District. Heavy rental density, much of it military-linked. Close to Fountain Creek in places.
80913 — Fort Carson. The installation and its privatised family housing. A separate jurisdiction with its own access and work-order process.
80925 — Lorson Ranch and south Powers. Newer tract construction, 2000s onward, with the newest housing stock in this zone and Fountain Creek proximity.
80926 — Southwest rural, Old Stage Road. Wells, onsite wastewater treatment systems, slope runoff, and genuinely long drive times.
Fountain itself sits at roughly 5,530 feet — the lowest ground in our coverage, and around 500 feet below the Old Colorado City end of the metro. Water in this region runs downhill toward here.
Colorado Springs
Your housing office first, through their maintenance work-order process. Not us.
That is not us declining work. It is how privatised military housing is structured, and knowing it saves you time you do not have.
Family housing at Fort Carson operates under the Military Housing Privatization Initiative, enacted in 1996, in which a private company finances, builds, renovates and operates housing under a long-term agreement with the Army. Roughly 10,000 people live in privatised family housing at Fort Carson. In that arrangement the operator — not you, and not the Army directly — controls who performs repairs in your home.
What that means practically when water appears:
On the record, and worth saying plainly: privatised military housing has been the subject of sustained Congressional oversight and national reporting, with mould, water leaks and burst pipes among the recurring themes, and a House Armed Services Committee hearing dedicated to conditions for military families. If you are being told a water problem is cosmetic and you do not believe it, you are not being unreasonable, and documenting it is the correct response.
Where we can help: if you move off post, if you own a home in Fountain, Security-Widefield or Lorson Ranch, or if your command or housing office directs an independent assessment through their process.
Water damage
It produces the worst losses we see anywhere in El Paso County, and this zone produces more of them than any other.
The arithmetic is brutal. A supply line that fails in an occupied house is a bucket and a phone call. The same failure in a house nobody is in runs continuously — through the ceiling below, into the wall cavities, across the subfloor, and down to the lowest point in the structure. It does not stop until somebody arrives.
Winter is when it happens. Burst risk climbs sharply below about 20°F with six or more hours of exposure, and the Front Range crosses freezing repeatedly in a single day. An empty house concentrates every risk factor at once: heat set low or off, nobody to hear it, and often an unheated garage or crawl run in the loop.
If you are PCSing out, or leaving a property empty through a cold stretch:
That last point is not a formality. 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, not after.
Colorado Springs
It sits on the lowest ground in the region, directly along Fountain Creek, and that is a real geographic difference rather than a marketing line.
Fountain sits at roughly 5,530 feet. Everything upstream in this watershed — the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest burn scars, Monument Creek, Camp Creek, Sand Creek and the whole Colorado Springs urban grid — eventually drains toward Fountain Creek and past this zone. The Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District exists as a joint El Paso and Pueblo County body specifically because of that.
Regional flood history is well documented, including significant events on Fountain Creek, Sand Creek and Shooks Run, and the 2015 Fountain Creek flooding is still within living memory for a lot of residents here.
What that means for your house:
And the coverage point that catches people every time: standard homeowners policies exclude flood. Surface water arriving from outdoors is not covered, whatever your all-perils deductible says. Flood coverage is separate, through the NFIP or a private carrier, with limits of $250,000 for the building and $100,000 for contents, contents settled at actual cash value, and a 30-day waiting period before a new policy takes effect.
If you have a finished basement, read the NFIP below-grade rules before you assume you are covered. NFIP provides no contents coverage below grade regardless of flood zone, and finished improvements below grade receive very limited or zero payout.
We do not determine flood zone status and we cannot tell you whether your property is in one. Your agent, your lender or the current flood mapping can. Coverage depends on your specific policy.
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
No, and we want to be straight about that rather than vague.
Residents in Security, Widefield and Fountain were exposed to elevated levels of PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — that migrated into the Widefield aquifer from decades of AFFF firefighting foam use at Peterson Space Force Base. The aquifer is a paleochannel of Fountain Creek. Contamination was publicly identified around 2016, and testing found levels well above federal health advisory thresholds in some wells.
Since then, Security Water District and Widefield Water and Sanitation District installed granular activated carbon treatment for their municipal supplies, and many private well owners were connected to alternative sources.
Why this is on the page: because people who live here ask about water, and a restoration company in this ZIP code that pretends not to know about it is not being straight. Why it is not our work: PFAS is a drinking-water quality issue. It is not a water-damage category, it does not change how a structure is dried, and remediating it is not our trade.
If you have questions about your drinking water:
Anyone in the restoration trade offering to “remediate PFAS” from your home should be treated with real scepticism. That is not what water damage restoration is, and it is not what our certifications cover.
Colorado Springs
Wells, septic, slope, and distance. Four things that change the job.
No municipal sewer means septic, and septic failure is a different loss from a sewer backup. 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. A failing system is a Category 3 event and it needs the same protocol as any sewage loss — containment, protective equipment, HEPA filtration, and removal rather than drying for porous materials.
No municipal water means a well, which means a pump, a pressure tank and a distribution system that can all fail — and which means that when the power goes out, so does your water.
Slope runoff arrives across property, not through a storm system. Old Stage Road country sheds water downhill and there is nothing engineered to catch it.
And distance is real. This is a genuine drive from the metro and we will give you an honest time on the phone rather than a hopeful one. If somebody closer can get to you faster during an active event, we will say so.
Water damage
Three populations in four ZIPs, and they fail differently.
Post-war through 1970s in parts of 80911. Older supply lines approaching or past design life, some galvanised in the oldest stock, and original sewer laterals. This is where age-related failures cluster.
1970s–90s across Security-Widefield. The window in which polybutylene supply piping was installed nationally — roughly 1979 to about 1995. A build year is a screening clue and nothing more. It does not prove pipe material. Only a plumbing survey does, and any contractor telling you your pipes are polybutylene without looking is guessing.
2000s onward in Lorson Ranch and south Powers (80925). Modern supply plumbing, modern insulation, and instead a pattern of repeatable new-build defects — the same fitting, the same transition, the same detail recurring across a subdivision. That is diagnostically useful: if we have seen it three streets over, we know where to meter first.
Rental density cuts across all of it. A large share of this zone’s housing is tenanted, much of it military-linked. That turns one loss into a tenant claim, an owner claim and, if it is handled slowly, a habitability dispute.
Colorado Springs
The short version: your landlord insures the building, you insure your own belongings, and both of you usually need to file.
What to do the moment you find water:
What renters insurance does and does not do: it covers your own property, and often loss-of-use costs if the unit becomes uninhabitable. It does not repair the building. The landlord’s policy does that, and it does not cover your possessions.
If you are a landlord or property manager reading this: authorise mitigation immediately. Most policies place a duty on you to prevent further damage, and the cost of waiting overnight for a decision routinely exceeds the cost of the first night’s equipment. A tenant’s position also strengthens with every day the problem sits.
We are a restoration contractor, not attorneys. Nothing here is a statement of Colorado landlord-tenant law.
Water damage
Because Colorado’s dry air hides it, and this zone adds two of its own reasons.
Low ambient humidity pulls moisture off exposed surfaces fast. 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. There is no condensation and 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.
Add the two local multipliers:
Nobody is in the building. A PCS-empty house or a between-tenants rental has no one to notice a smell, a soft spot or a rising water bill.
The reporting chain is long. In privatised housing or a managed rental, the person who sees the problem is not the person who authorises the fix. Days pass in the gap, and days are what turn a Category 1 loss into a Category 2 one.
What we do instead of guessing: meter against unaffected material of the same type in the same building, photograph 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.
Colorado Springs
Worth saying on a page aimed at people who often cannot afford a surprise bill.
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 water.
If you are in a rental or in base housing, report it anyway even if you clean it up yourself. An undocumented water event is the one that becomes your problem at move-out.
Water damage
Call (719) 618-9013 — Fountain, Security-Widefield, Lorson Ranch and south El Paso County, 24 hours a day.
📞 Call (719) 618-9013Frequently asked
IICRC-certified. We meter before we quote, and you get the readings.
24/7 — Colorado Springs and El Paso County