Pinellas County

Five hundred of six hundred houses, in one night

In Baywood Village, Hurricane Helene flooded roughly five hundred of about six hundred homes. Some took thirty inches of water inside.

Area: Palm Harbor
Water profile: Coastal surge along a very flat, very low shoreline
Hours: 24 hours, every day

(813) 555-0147Call now — someone picks up

Where the water comes from

Palm Harbor’s water

Coastal surge along a very flat, very low shoreline. The ground at Ozona, Crystal Beach and Baywood Village barely rises, so water runs a long way inland before anything slows it.

Hurricane Helene
26–27 September 2024
Baywood Village was almost entirely flooded. Ozona Village Hall took several feet and was still under repair into mid-2025. At Ozona Shores Marina, early counts put forty to sixty boats on their sides or on top of each other.
Hurricane Idalia
August 2023
Hit this stretch of coast hard. Immediately north in Tarpon Springs, surge pushed the Anclote River up and submerged the downtown.

A flooded residential street in Florida lined with palm trees, a traffic sign leaning over the standing water. — A residential street under water in central Florida. Roads clear long before the houses on them are dry.

What is built here

Median build year around 1985, with a very specific 1977–89 core

The citrus groves east of Lake Tarpon were subdivided through the 1960s and 70s — the winter of 1972 killed much of the crop and accelerated it. Palm Harbor went from roughly 5,200 people in 1980 to over 50,000 by 1990.

Highland Lakes was built between 1977 and 1989 and comprises 2,454 attached villas and single-family homes, a 55+ community on Lake Tarpon. Around Innisbrook the stock is 1970s and 80s golf-resort housing. The corridor east of the lake — Lansbrook, Ridgemoor, Cobb's Landing — filled in through the late 1980s and 90s.

The coastal villages at Ozona and Crystal Beach are older, smaller, mixed in vintage, and sit low and close to the water. Those are a different job from anything inland.

Neighbourhoods we work in

Ozona
Crystal Beach
Baywood Village
Highland Lakes
Innisbrook
Lansbrook
Ridgemoor
Cobb's Landing

What we are called for

How houses in Palm Harbor actually fail

When the repair estimate approaches half the value of the house

If your home is in a Special Flood Hazard Area and the cost to repair reaches fifty percent of the structure's pre-damage market value, it is considered substantially damaged and cannot simply be put back as it was — it has to meet current floodplain code, which in Pinellas means a finished floor one foot above the Base Flood Elevation. That threshold changes what a scope of work should even try to do, and we will tell you where you are against it before we start.

Polybutylene, right across the 1977–89 core

The pipe window and Palm Harbor's building boom are the same years. Highland Lakes in particular sits squarely inside it.

Houses that are empty half the year

A supply line fails in an unoccupied seasonal home and runs for weeks. That is the difference between a straightforward dry-out and a full remediation, because the mould clock started long before anyone opened the door. If you leave for the season, shut the water off at the main.

Attached villas share more than a wall

Water crosses the party wall into the neighbouring unit, and then there is a second insurer and an association policy involved.

Getting to you

Palm Harbor, from our crews

The longest run we make, and the most exposed to bridge closure — Courtney Campbell, then SR 580 and US 19.

Call and tell us the cross streets. We will tell you what to do before anyone arrives — where the shut-off usually is in a house like yours, what to move, and what to leave exactly where it is for the photographs.

(813) 555-0147Call now — someone picks up