What a wet Cherry Hills basement gets from the first visit, and what you get
| What happens |
What it means for you |
| Standing water pumped off the slab and the carpet pad lifted before the drywall drinks it |
The finished walls stop wicking, and the wine room and theater stay a drying job instead of a demolition |
| Every wall on the level metered at the base and compared to a dry wall upstairs |
Water that followed the footing to the far side of the basement gets found now |
| The source named before drying begins: ground water, a pipe, a boiler loop, or the roof |
You learn whether this happens again the next time the canal runs full |
| Hardwood, stone, and built-in cabinetry metered separately from carpet and drywall |
Finishes that took years to source get a drying plan instead of a dumpster |
| Air movers and dehumidifiers placed by the readings, with the mechanical room kept clear |
A cool, closed basement dries on a schedule that the readings confirm |
| Photos, readings, and dates logged from the first hour |
Your adjuster gets a file, and so does the contractor who rebuilds |
Before you rip up the carpet yourself
Move rugs, boxes, and anything on legs off the wet floor. Photograph the water line on the walls and the boxes before anything goes to the garage. Leave the carpet down and the pad in place, because pulling it apart yourself spreads the water and destroys the record the adjuster will want. Do not run the furnace fan to dry the space; it moves damp air through the ductwork. Then call. Say what you see. The provider sorts out whether the job is extraction, drying, or finding a leak.
Why Cherry Hills Village basements get wet in June and freeze in January
Cherry Hills Village incorporated in 1945 and kept the acre lots, the bridle paths, and the unpaved shoulders that make it look like country. The oldest houses are 1920s estates along Hampden and Quincy. Most of the rest are brick ranches from the 1950s through the 1970s on one-acre lots, and custom two-stories built from the 1980s through the 2020s on the same size ground. Nearly every one has a full basement, and most of those basements are finished.
Two waterways run through the city. Little Dry Creek rises in Centennial and crosses the Village on its way to the South Platte in Englewood. The High Line Canal, dug in 1883, winds across the middle of town and seeps 60 to 80 percent of the water it carries into the ground beside it while it runs, April through October. Basements near either one take ground water in a wet spring. The September 2013 storms that put Arapahoe County on the federal disaster list dropped days of rain on ground that was already full.
Winter is the other half. Denver hit minus 24 on December 22, 2022, one degree off the all-time December record, after a 37-degree drop in a single hour. Hose bibs, garage supply lines, and sprinkler backflow preventers that never got blown out split that week across the metro. Summer brings hail; a June or July cell can open a roof over a bedroom wing and the ceiling below it sags by morning.
Denver Water owns and runs the water system inside Cherry Hills Village under a total service contract, and it lists the city among its distributor contracts, so a leak on the street side of the meter is a Denver Water call. Once the house is dry, the rebuild of plumbing, wiring, and finished walls goes through the Cherry Hills Village building permit desk at the city hall on East Quincy Avenue.
Will my homeowner policy pay for a wet basement?
It depends on how the water got in, and nobody who has not read your policy can answer for it. A supply line that split in the cold or a water heater that let go is usually treated as sudden damage. Ground water that seeped through the foundation or rose through a floor drain is often excluded unless you carry a water backup endorsement, and surface flooding from the creek is a separate flood policy. The provider photographs the basement, logs the readings from the first visit, and writes a scope. Your adjuster reads it and decides. Nothing on this site is a promise about what a policy will pay.
The neighborhoods and towns we cover
We cover Cherry Hills Village first, from Old Cherry Hills and Cherryridge along University Boulevard to Cherry Hills Farm, Glenmoor, and Charlou on the east side, and Buell Mansion, Devonshire Heights, Mansfield Heights, Cherry Hills North, and Cherry Hills Park in between. We also cover Greenwood Village, Englewood, Littleton, Centennial, Bow Mar, and Columbine Valley, plus the Denver neighborhoods that border the Village: Cherry Creek, Belcaro, Wellshire, University Hills, Hampden South, Southmoor Park, and Holly Hills. The areas page has a page for each of them.
Call (720) 807-5901 and say what you are standing in. An independent local water damage provider serving Cherry Hills Village and Arapahoe County takes it from there.
Standing by