NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
When a nor’easter or tropical storm hits Merrick’s South Shore, the damage you can see is rarely the whole story. Water finds its way into wall cavities, attic insulation, and basement framing — and in a home built in the 1950s, which describes a lot of Merrick, that hidden moisture starts growing mold within 24 to 48 hours. What looked like a roof leak on Monday becomes a remediation job by Thursday.
Getting the right team on-site quickly changes that outcome entirely. We conduct a thorough assessment — including thermal imaging to find moisture behind walls — so the full scope of damage gets documented and addressed from the start, not discovered six months later when you’re dealing with a mold outbreak or a soft floor.
For homeowners in south Merrick and along the Whaleneck Peninsula, there’s another layer: saltwater intrusion. When storm surge pushes bay water into your storm drains and through your foundation, it corrodes, it stains, and it accelerates structural deterioration in ways that freshwater flooding simply doesn’t. We handle that correctly because we have experience specific to coastal Nassau County — not a contractor reading from a national playbook.
We are a full-service disaster restoration company serving Nassau County, Suffolk County, Queens, and New York City — available 24 hours a day, every day of the year. We hold a Nassau County General Contractor license, NYS DOL Mold Remediation and Asbestos Handler certifications, USEPA Lead/RRP certification, and we’re an NYS Office of General Services Approved Emergency Response Contractor — a government-level credential that very few restoration companies in this area can claim.
That license stack matters specifically in Merrick. With a median home construction year of 1956, a large portion of the homes we work in contain asbestos-containing materials and lead-based paint. When storm damage disturbs those materials, New York State law requires licensed contractors to handle them. A company without those credentials isn’t just underqualified — they may be operating illegally in your home.
We bill your insurance carrier directly, handle all documentation, and back every job with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. You focus on your family. We handle the rest.
It starts the moment you call. Whether it’s 2 AM after a nor’easter or the afternoon following a tropical storm, someone answers — and we can be on-site in Merrick quickly. The first thing we do is secure the property: emergency tarping, board-up, debris removal, whatever is needed to stop additional damage from entering the home.
From there, we conduct a full damage assessment. That includes visual inspection and thermal imaging to detect moisture intrusion behind walls, under floors, and in ceilings — areas that look fine but are already holding water. In Merrick’s older housing stock, this step is critical. A 1950s home has decades of settled framing and original insulation that can trap water invisibly for weeks. We document everything thoroughly, both for the repair scope and for your insurance claim.
Once the assessment is complete, we begin the restoration sequence: water extraction, structural drying, mold prevention treatment, and then structural and interior repair. If asbestos or lead is identified — which is a real possibility in pre-1980 Merrick homes — we handle that in-house under our NYS DOL certifications. All structural work is permitted through the Town of Hempstead Building Department. When we’re done, your home isn’t just patched — it’s restored to pre-damage condition, with materials chosen to hold up better against the next storm.
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Storm damage restoration isn’t one service — it’s a sequence of them. What we bring to a Merrick job is the ability to handle that entire sequence under one roof, with one team, and one point of accountability. That matters because storm damage in a coastal Nassau County community rarely stays simple.
The full scope of what we handle includes emergency securing and board-up, water extraction and structural drying, mold assessment and remediation, asbestos and lead management for pre-1980 homes, roof repair and replacement, siding and structural repair, interior restoration including drywall, flooring, and insulation, and final inspection and documentation for your insurance claim. For south Merrick homeowners dealing with saltwater intrusion — a documented reality after Sandy pushed bay water into streets like George Court and Helen Court — we also address the corrosive effects that saltwater has on structural materials, which require a different approach than standard freshwater flood cleanup.
Every job includes direct insurance billing. We document the damage, communicate with your carrier, and handle the claim process so you’re not left negotiating with an adjuster while your home is still drying out. No upfront costs, no surprise invoices, and no subcontractors showing up without credentials. What you see is what you get — a licensed, insured team that knows Merrick’s South Shore and knows how to restore it correctly.
This is one of the most common questions we get, and the honest answer is: it depends on the type of damage and the policies you carry. Standard homeowners insurance typically covers wind damage, roof damage, and rain-driven water intrusion — things like a tree falling through your roof or wind-driven rain entering through a damaged wall. What it generally does not cover is flood damage caused by rising water, including storm surge from South Oyster Bay, which is exactly the kind of flooding that devastated south Merrick during Hurricane Sandy.
For that type of damage, you’d need a separate flood insurance policy through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private carrier. Many Merrick homeowners in south Merrick and along the Whaleneck Peninsula carry both policies, but there are gaps between what each covers — and those gaps can become costly if your claim isn’t documented correctly. We handle the documentation and billing process for both types of claims, so nothing falls through the cracks. We’ve worked through Nassau County insurance claims on storm-damaged homes and know how to present the damage in a way that gives you the best chance of a fair settlement.
Mold can begin developing within 24 to 48 hours of water intrusion — and in Merrick’s climate, that window is not theoretical. The combination of warm summer storm seasons and the humidity that follows a major rain or surge event creates near-ideal conditions for mold growth, especially inside wall cavities, under flooring, and in attic insulation where air circulation is limited.
The bigger issue in Merrick specifically is that a lot of the housing stock is older — homes built in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s often have original insulation, wood framing, and building materials that absorb moisture more readily than modern construction. Once mold establishes itself in those materials, remediation becomes significantly more involved and expensive than it would have been if the moisture had been addressed within the first day or two. That’s why the speed of your first call matters as much as who you call. Getting extraction and drying equipment running within hours of the storm is the single most effective thing you can do to keep a manageable repair from turning into a major remediation project.
Yes, and it’s worth taking seriously. Homes built before 1980 in Nassau County — which covers the vast majority of Merrick’s housing stock, given the median construction year of 1956 — commonly contain asbestos in insulation, floor tiles, pipe wrap, roofing materials, and joint compound. When storm damage disturbs those materials, whether through a roof breach, water intrusion, or structural impact, New York State law requires that an NYS DOL-licensed Asbestos Handler manage those materials before any repair work proceeds.
A storm contractor who doesn’t hold that license cannot legally complete the job in your home. More importantly, disturbing asbestos without proper containment and removal creates a health hazard for your family. We hold NYS DOL Asbestos Handler certification and handle this in-house — we don’t subcontract it out or skip the step because it’s inconvenient. If your home was built before 1980, we factor this into the assessment from the start, so there are no surprises mid-project and no delays waiting for a separate specialty contractor to show up.
Merrick is a hamlet within the Town of Hempstead, which means all building permits for structural repair and restoration work are issued through the Town of Hempstead Building Department — there’s no separate village building department like you’d find in an incorporated village. Emergency work like tarping, board-up, and temporary securing typically doesn’t require a permit and can proceed immediately. But structural repairs — roof replacement, framing work, significant interior restoration — do require permits, and the work needs to be performed by a Nassau County-licensed General Contractor.
This matters because after a major storm, out-of-area contractors and storm chasers frequently show up in communities like Merrick without the proper local licensing. If they perform structural work without a Nassau County GC license or without pulling the required permits, that work may not pass inspection, could create problems when you sell the home, and could potentially void your insurance coverage. We hold a Nassau County General Contractor license and handle all required permitting through the Town of Hempstead as part of the restoration process — it’s not an add-on, it’s standard.
The honest answer is that it varies significantly based on the scope of damage, and in Merrick specifically, the full scope often isn’t visible until after the initial assessment. A straightforward roof repair with no water intrusion might be completed in a few days. A home that experienced significant flooding — the kind south Merrick saw during Sandy, with three to six feet of water on residential streets — can take several weeks to several months depending on what the water reached and how long it sat before extraction began.
The biggest factor affecting timeline is how quickly the moisture is addressed. Structural drying alone typically takes three to five days with professional equipment running continuously. If mold has already developed, remediation adds time before any reconstruction can begin. If asbestos-containing materials were disturbed, proper abatement has to happen before the rebuild. We give you a realistic timeline after the initial assessment — not a number designed to get you to sign, but an honest projection based on what we actually find. For insurance purposes, we document every phase of the timeline so your claim reflects the true scope of the restoration.
This is exactly the right question to ask — and the fact that you’re asking it puts you ahead of a lot of homeowners who find out too late. In New York, contractor licensing is public record. A General Contractor working in Merrick needs a Nassau County GC license, which you can verify through Nassau County’s licensing database. If the work involves mold, the contractor needs an NYS DOL Mold Remediation Contractor license. If your home was built before 1980 and asbestos may be present, they need an NYS DOL Asbestos Handler license. For homes built before 1978, USEPA Lead/RRP certification is required for any renovation or repair work.
Beyond those baseline requirements, we are an NYS Office of General Services Approved Emergency Response Contractor — a credential that requires state-level review and approval, and one that most local restoration companies do not hold. All of our licenses are verifiable, and we encourage you to look them up before signing anything. After Sandy, Long Island homeowners learned the hard way what happens when unlicensed contractors take deposits and disappear. Merrick’s South Shore community deserves better than that, and the way you protect yourself is by verifying credentials before the first check is written — not after.
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