Water Damage Cleanup in Burlington, NC

Profyce is a free referral service. Your call goes to an independent local provider; Profyce does not do the work itself.

Standing water in your Burlington home is a clock, not just a mess. Call the number below and an independent local cleanup crew that works Alamance County will pick up. Profyce is a referral line, not a restoration company, and you pay nothing for the call.

Before they arrive, stop the water if it is coming from inside the house. Close the main valve where the line enters, usually the crawlspace, basement or a utility wall, or at the meter box by the curb. The city has not published a standard shutoff location that we could verify, so you may have to look. If the water is coming from a creek or the street, leave it alone and stay out of it.

Shut off electricity to the wet rooms only if the breaker panel is on a dry floor and you can reach it without touching water. Open the lowest tap to drain the lines, and turn off the water heater at the breaker or gas valve if the supply is closed. Then photograph everything before you move it, and lift furniture, boxes and electronics out of the water.

What makes Burlington different

Burlington is an Alamance County city with a western fringe in Guilford County. Two things make water damage here its own problem: the creeks that run through town, and the storms that have filled them.

Little Alamance Creek and the July 2025 flood

Little Alamance Creek runs more than 12 miles, and much of that length is inside Burlington, including City Park. NC DEQ rates the creek impaired, with urban runoff the likely cause, and Burlington is one of only two municipalities in the subbasin required to run a stormwater program.

On July 6, 2025, Tropical Storm Chantal dropped 8.7 to 9.4 inches of rain on Burlington in about nine hours, per the Alamance News. The City Park ballfields sat under about three feet of water, the Haw River crested at roughly 32 feet, its second-highest reading on record, and Alamance County logged 61 water rescues and two deaths. The Burlington, Graham and Mebane water plants went offline and boil-water notices followed, according to Carolina Public Press. Mebane called the rainfall a 1,000-year event.

What that means for you: a house near the creek, City Park or the low ground toward the Haw can take water from outside even when nothing inside is broken. That water is runoff, and runoff is treated differently from a burst pipe, both by the crew and by your insurer.

Older storms and the Haw

Hurricane Florence in September 2018 dropped 3.96 to 5.85 inches across Alamance County per NWS Raleigh, and the county emergency management director named the Haw River area and Swepsonville as the main flood concerns. Great Alamance Creek joins the Haw at Swepsonville. If your property sits in that corridor, past storms are a guide to where water goes next time.

Stormwater pooling against a foundation or a blocked street drain can be reported to the city’s Fix it, Burlington line at (336) 222-5091. The city has held an NPDES stormwater permit since July 2007.

The pipes that fail inside the house

More than half of Burlington’s housing, 14,627 of 27,762 units, was built before 1980, and the median home dates to 1978, according to the 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey. Older supply lines and drains in the mill-era neighborhoods, from Glencoe Mill Village on the Haw to Piedmont Heights beside the old Burlington Mills site to the Lakeside Mills district, are a common source of the slow leak that soaks a subfloor for weeks before anyone notices.

Freeze damage is the other inside source. Burlington’s January mean daily low is 30.7 degrees, and the arctic blast of December 2022 brought two nights near 9 degrees, the coldest for those dates since 1983. Pipes burst at three Alamance County schools that week. In a home, the same event means a crawlspace full of water by the time the thaw arrives.

Who to call at the city

A leak on the street side of your meter belongs to the City of Burlington Water Resources Department, (336) 222-5133 during the day. After hours the department directs residents to the Burlington Police Department at (336) 229-3500. If the water entering your house came from a main break, the city fixes the main, but the cleanup inside is still yours to arrange.

Common water damage situations in Burlington

• Creek and runoff flooding after a tropical storm. Chantal put parts of the city under feet of water in hours. Water from outside often carries silt and contaminants, and the crew will treat it as more than a clean-water job.
• Crawlspace flooding after a freeze-thaw burst. A supply line splits during a cold night like those in December 2022, and the crawlspace fills while the house above looks fine. Insulation, joists and ductwork all soak.
• Slow leak in an older mill house. Galvanized or cast iron pipe in a pre-1960 home in Glencoe, Piedmont Heights or along East Davis Street weeps behind a wall until the drywall stains or the floor goes soft.
• Sewer backup through a floor drain or tub. Heavy rain overwhelms an aging drain line and sewage comes up inside. This is Category 3 water under the IICRC S500 standard, and it needs a professional, not a shop vac.
• Water heater tank failure. A tank that lets go dumps its whole volume onto whatever is below, often a laundry room or garage floor that drains toward finished space.
• Supply line or appliance hose rupture. Washing machine, dishwasher and refrigerator lines fail while you are at work. Clean water, but eight hours of it reaches every room on that level.
• Rain through a roof or window in a wind-driven storm. The S500 Consensus Body said in February 2026 that weather-related ingress is not automatically Category 3, so the crew will assess it rather than assume the worst.
• Crawlspace moisture that never fully dries. Advanced Energy in Raleigh notes that many crawlspace homes have poor moisture management. A wet crawlspace after a storm can grow mold even without visible flooding upstairs.

What it might cost

Every number here is a national range from Fixr or Bob Vila, listed to give you a sense of scale. They are not Burlington prices and not quotes. The crew that answers sets its own rates and will quote your job after seeing it. Profyce does not price the work and is not paid by you.

• Water damage restoration, whole job: $1,200 to $5,000 (Fixr) or $1,305 to $5,707 (Bob Vila).
• Extraction and drying, clean water (Category 1): $3.75 to $4.25 per square foot (Fixr).
• Extraction and drying, gray water (Category 2): $4.10 to $6.50 per square foot (Fixr).
• Extraction and drying, black water (Category 3, including sewage): $7.00 to $7.50 per square foot (Fixr).
• Drying a 500 square foot basement with no repairs: $2,000 to $7,000 (Fixr).
• Flooded basement cleanup: $2,000 to $7,000 (Fixr).
• Mold remediation if drying started too late: $1,500 to $9,000 (Fixr).
• Burst pipe repair, if a plumber is also needed to stop the source: $200 to $1,000 (Fixr).

Ask whether the quote covers extraction only, or also demolition, drying equipment days and rebuild. Those are often separate line items.

Who answers when you call

An independent water damage company that covers Burlington picks up the line on this page. Profyce does not send crews and is not a restoration contractor. Get the company name before you agree to anything. If the job includes plumbing repair, ask for the plumbing license number and look it up at the NC State Board lookup. Water damage cleanup itself is not licensed by that board, so ask about insurance and whether the crew follows the IICRC S500 standard. The contract, the price and the work are between you and them.

Common questions in Burlington

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