Water, fire and storm damage restoration in Conway, AR

Conway is the Faulkner County seat, about 30 miles northwest of Little Rock up I-40, and Service Restoration covers it from its two Little Rock offices at 9524 I-30 and 7821 Doyle Springs Rd Suite F. Both are rated 5.0 stars on Google, from 103 and 32 reviews. The company has no Conway office. From the I-30 office the drive is about 40 to 45 minutes on a clear road, up I-30, across the river and west on I-40. Near Little Rock a crew is typically on-site within 60 minutes, depending on drive time, traffic, road conditions and call volume, and Conway is far enough out that response usually runs longer, more so when I-40 backs up at rush hour or after a wreck near Mayflower. The 24/7 call center qualifies the job and gives you a straight answer on timing when you call. Service Restoration was founded in 2014 and is independently owned, not a franchise.

Because of that drive, the first few minutes after you find water are worth using well. Shut the water off at the main, which in most Conway homes is at the meter box near the street, and in many newer houses has a second valve in the garage. Switch off the power to wet rooms at the breaker if you can do it without standing in water. Pull rugs and loose items off wet floors, put blocks or foil under furniture legs, move papers and electronics to a dry room, and take photos before anything is moved. Do not use a household vacuum on standing water and do not walk under a sagging ceiling. Those steps keep the loss from spreading while the crew is on I-40, and the photos help your adjuster later.

The oldest houses in Conway are in the blocks around downtown, Front Street and Oak Street and the streets near Hendrix College, where many homes date from the early 1900s through the 1940s. Craftsman bungalows, cottages and two-story frame houses there sit on piers over a crawlspace, with hardwood floors and, in many, original or patched galvanized and cast iron plumbing. A leak under one of these floors runs into the crawlspace first, soaks the subfloor and joists and shows up later as a cupped floor or a soft spot near a bathroom. Drying a crawlspace home means setting equipment under the house as well as inside, and checking the subfloor by meter rather than by eye. Damp framing left in a humid crawlspace is also how mold starts, so the drying needs to begin quickly. Because so much of this housing predates 1978, the company's EPA Lead Safe certification, alongside its IICRC certification, matters when trim, plaster or drywall has to come out.

Conway has three colleges, the University of Central Arkansas, Hendrix College and Central Baptist College, and the neighborhoods around UCA and Donaghey Avenue are full of rental houses, duplexes and apartment buildings. A water loss in a student rental often has several people involved: tenants who found it, a landlord or property manager who has to authorize the work, and sometimes parents calling from out of town. The free inspection documents the loss with photos, moisture readings and thermal images, and the loss is written up in Xactimate, so everyone can see the same scope. Out in west Conway along Dave Ward Drive and in the subdivisions to the south toward Lake Conway and to the north off US-65, the housing is mostly newer slab and two-story homes from the 1990s onward. There, the usual calls are a washer hose or ice maker line that floods a slab and spreads under laminate into several rooms, an upstairs water heater or tub that comes through the ceiling, and attic supply lines that split in a hard freeze.

Conway's water comes from several directions. Tucker Creek runs through town and rises fast in a heavy spring rain, along with the smaller ditches and drainage channels in the newer subdivisions, sending water into garages, across slab floors and into low streets. The Arkansas River runs along the west side of the county past Toad Suck Lock and Dam and Cadron Settlement Park, and it ran high through all of central Arkansas during the 2019 high water. Lake Conway to the south and Beaverfork Lake to the northwest are not flood threats to most homes, but the low ground near them takes runoff in a big storm. Water that comes in from outside is handled as contaminated water, with protective equipment and disposal of soaked porous materials such as carpet pad and drywall. If the water is still rising, the call center will tell you honestly when drying can start.

Conway has the commercial and institutional buildings that come with a college town and county seat: residence halls, classroom buildings and athletic facilities at UCA, Hendrix and Central Baptist, Conway Regional and Baptist Health's Conway hospital and the medical offices around them, large churches, schools, hotels near the I-40 exits and the offices and plants along the interstate. The company keeps case studies from commercial work in hotels, churches, office buildings and a college building in Little Rock. On a large loss it sends multiple crews and brings its own temporary power and air conditioning from its equipment library. Fire and smoke damage, storm tarping, contents cleaning and storage and reconstruction are all done by the same company. Every job starts with a free inspection, not a price over the phone, and coverage is decided by your policy and your adjuster, case by case. Nobody on the team promises it.

What causes the most water, fire and storm damage in Conway?

Conway has the humid subtropical climate of central Arkansas, and spring is the dangerous season. From March through May, severe thunderstorms bring large hail, straight-line winds and tornadoes across Faulkner County, and the EF4 tornado of April 27, 2014 that struck Mayflower and Vilonia, on either side of Conway, is the county's reminder of what those storms can do. The same storms drop heavy rain that puts Tucker Creek and the subdivision ditches out of their banks. The Arkansas River on the west side of the county is the slower risk, as the 2019 high water showed. Winters are mild in most years, but ice storms and the Arctic outbreaks of February 2021 and December 2022 brought nights in the teens that split supply lines in crawlspaces under the older homes near downtown and in the attics of newer two-story homes, and icy stretches of I-40 slow every response. Summer heat and humidity slow drying, so equipment needs to be running within hours of a leak.

What do Conway jobs usually involve?

• Crawlspace and subfloor water damage under the older pier-and-beam homes near downtown, Front Street and Hendrix College
• Water losses in student rentals, duplexes and apartments around UCA, documented so tenants, landlords and adjusters see the same scope
• Slab leak, washer hose, ice maker and upstairs water heater losses in the newer subdivisions of west, south and north Conway
• Flash flood and ditch overflow cleanup along Tucker Creek and in low-lying subdivisions, handled as contaminated water
• Sprinkler, roof and HVAC water losses in college buildings, medical offices, churches, hotels and offices, with the company's own temporary power and air conditioning
• Emergency tarping and debris removal after hail and tornadoes, plus fire and smoke cleanup, contents cleaning and storage, and reconstruction by the same company

Which Conway neighborhoods do we cover?

• Downtown Conway
• the Front Street and Oak Street area
• the Hendrix College area
• the UCA area and Donaghey Avenue
• west Conway along Dave Ward Drive
• south Conway toward Lake Conway
• north Conway off US-65
• the Tucker Creek area

Near the University of Central Arkansas, Hendrix College, Central Baptist College, Lake Conway, Beaverfork Lake, Tucker Creek, Toad Suck Lock and Dam, Cadron Settlement Park, Conway Regional Medical Center, I-40, US-64 and US-65.