Water Damage Restoration in Rural Laramie County

These are unincorporated communities rather than towns, scattered east, west and north of Cheyenne: Carpenter (82054) and Hillsdale (82060) to the east, Granite Canon (82059) to the west, Horse Creek (82061) and Meriden (82081) to the north.

What they have in common matters more than where they are. Almost every property out here runs on a private well and a septic system, heats with propane, and sits at the end of a long private drive. Each of those changes something about how water damage starts, how long it runs, and what we can do about it.

The well is a water source that never stops

In town, shutting the main valve ends the supply. On a well, the pump keeps running as long as it has power and the pressure switch is calling for water, so a burst line can pump the well dry into your house.

Know where the breaker for your well pump is. On a rural property that breaker is the real shut-off, and killing it is the first thing to do. Then close the valve at the pressure tank.

The pressure tank itself is a common failure point. A tank that corrodes through or freezes and splits releases its charge and then runs continuously. Pump houses and well pits are rarely heated and rarely visited, which is why these losses are usually discovered late.

Septic is not a city sewer

A backup through a floor drain out here means the septic system, not a municipal main. There is no utility to call and no city crew to check the line. The usual causes are a full tank, a failed or frozen leach field, a collapsed line, or simple hydraulic overload during a wet spell.

The cleanup is the same as any sewage backup, because once it is inside the building it is Category 3 water regardless of where it came from: containment first, porous materials removed rather than cleaned, disinfection, then drying. What differs is that the cause has to be dealt with by a septic contractor before the system can be used again, or it will simply back up a second time.

Propane, power and empty buildings

• Running out of propane in a cold snap is a genuine cause of burst pipes. The furnace stops, the house cools through the night, and lines in crawl spaces and exterior walls freeze. Watching the tank gauge in January is cheaper than any call you will make to us.
• Power cuts last longer out here. No power means no well pump, no furnace blower and no sump pump. A sump with no battery backup does nothing during exactly the storm that needed it.
• Outbuildings, shops and second houses are the single biggest multiplier on rural losses. The damage is not caused by the failure, it is caused by the weeks before anyone opens the door.

Getting to you

Granite Canon and Horse Creek sit higher and get weather before Cheyenne does. Carpenter and Hillsdale are flatter but further east. Across all of them the variable is not the highway, it is the last mile of private drive. Tell us on the phone what your access is like and whether it needs clearing, because arriving and not being able to reach the house helps nobody.

Once we are there it runs as it does anywhere: extraction, moisture mapping, removal of what cannot be dried, structural drying to a logged reading. Crawl spaces are the common complication out here, because they trap humidity and are easy to leave half dry, which is how mold starts under a floor nobody looks at. Frozen pipes are the usual cause in winter, and our guide to preventing them is written for exactly these properties.