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A 1920s bungalow in Seminole Heights and a 2005 two-storey in Westchase are not the same job. They do not even fail the same way.
Where the water comes from
Tampa gets both kinds. Surge comes up the bay and into the low waterfront streets. Rain comes down and the Hillsborough River takes days to give it back.
Hurricane Helene
26–27 September 2024
A surge event, with the storm's centre hundreds of miles away in the Big Bend. Five to seven feet of water above ground around the bay. Bayshore closed from Platt to Euclid. Davis Islands was cut off entirely and people were taken out by boat.
Hurricane Milton
9–10 October 2024
The opposite storm. Twelve to thirteen inches of rain, and the Hillsborough River crested at a record 38.16 feet at Morris Bridge on 12 October. The Tampa Bypass Canal was opened to keep the river out of Temple Terrace and Tampa.
Hurricane Debby
5 August 2024
Around seven inches over two days. Davis Islands streets under water again, six weeks before Helene did it properly.
Tropical Storm Eta
November 2020
Just over four feet of surge in the bay and up to ten inches of rain. South Tampa flooded at high tide and part of the Courtney Campbell closed.
What is built here
That median is an average of two entirely different cities. East Tampa's housing dates to the early 1980s. Westchase dates to the early 2000s. Hyde Park and Ybor City are a lifetime older than either.
Most of Florida is slab-on-grade, and most of Tampa is too. But the pre-1930s bungalow stock in Hyde Park, Seminole Heights and Tampa Heights is frequently raised pier-and-beam over a crawlspace — a genuinely different drying problem in a state that mostly does not have them. Water under a raised floor does not behave like water on a slab, and it does not dry on the same schedule.
The mid-century core is concrete block over terrazzo. The 1970s and 80s rings are stucco on block. The 2000s subdivisions are block on the ground floor with a wood-framed second storey above.
What we are called for
They corrode from the inside out. The signature is a backup that clears and then returns within days or weeks, because the corroded pipe has developed sharp edges along the bottom that catch paper. Common under Seminole Heights, Palma Ceia and old Hyde Park.
Grey plastic supply lines that chlorine attacks from the inside. They fail suddenly rather than gradually. Carrollwood, Temple Terrace and the early New Tampa builds are squarely in that window.
A Florida air handler pulls twenty to fifty gallons of water out of the air on a summer day. When the drain line clogs or the secondary pan rusts through, that water goes into the ceiling below or the wall beside it — often for days before anyone notices a stain. This is the most common water loss in the state and it has nothing to do with weather.
The tile lasts fifty years. The underlayment beneath it — which is the part actually keeping water out — lasts fifteen to twenty-five in this heat. Every tile roof laid in Tampa in the 1990s is past that now. It is why a ceiling can be wet under a roof with nothing visibly wrong with it.
Tampa is flat, so water leaves slowly. Southeast Seminole Heights has been under a major stormwater conveyance project since 2021 for exactly this reason.
Getting to you
Our nearest crews work out of Tampa. No bay crossing is involved.
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.