Free visual inspection and a written scope of work before any mitigation begins - photos, moisture readings, and drying logs go in your claim file
The scope we write is the scope we bill. Anything new gets shown to you, in writing, before we touch it.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterMeet the Santee Team Behind DryMark Restoration Santee
We’re the crew that shows up when water’s still moving through your drywall or mold’s creeping behind your Santee bathroom vanity. Every person on this page has walked through a flooded living room in Mission Gorge, pulled wet insulation from a crawl space near Carlton Hills, or sat with a homeowner at 2 a.m. while the dehumidifiers hummed. What ties us together isn’t a handbook. It’s that we all started on the job site before we ever sat behind a desk, and we still think in moisture readings and square footage.
Our People
Alicia Brennan, Owner
I started Back to Dry in 2011 after spending years as a claims adjuster watching homeowners lose thousands because their restoration company couldn’t produce the right documentation. The gap between what happened in the house and what the insurance file showed - that gap became the business. In Santee, I still walk jobs personally when the moisture map looks complicated or the adjuster needs someone who speaks their language. I’ll tell you exactly what the thermal camera saw, what the psychrometric chart says about drying your specific materials, and what your written scope covers before anyone unloads equipment. I also keep a running bet with the crew about whose “small leak” call turns into the biggest drying project. Current record: a Carlton Oaks kitchen pipe that became a 1,400-square-foot whole-house dry-out. The homeowner thought it was a puddle. The moisture meter read 87 percent in the subfloor.
Marcus T., Lead Water & Mold Technician
Marcus has been running mitigation crews for fourteen years, and he still opens every job by kneeling down with a pinless moisture meter to confirm what the homeowner already suspects. He’s IICRC-certified in Water Damage Restoration (WRT) and Applied Microbial Remediation (AMRT), which means he can legally sign off on mold clearance testing in California. Marcus grew up in El Cajon and knows Santee’s older slab foundations from the 1970s builds near Fanita Drive - he can tell you which ones wick moisture laterally across the whole footprint instead of staying localized. Off the job, he restores vintage motorcycles and applies the same patience to both: measure twice, cut once, document everything. He’s the one who trains new hires to photograph every wall cavity before the drywall goes back, because “the insurance company wasn’t there at midnight, but the photo record was.”
Dana R., Senior Installer & Reconstruction Lead
Dana runs our rebuild division, which means she takes over after the drying’s done and the mold’s cleared. She’s a California-licensed contractor with a specialty in matching existing finishes - the oak trim from a 1985 Santee Ranch home, the textured ceiling that stopped being manufactured in 2003, the tile grout that only looks right if you know the original supplier was Dal-Tile’s Kolorado line. Dana started as a carpenter’s apprentice in San Diego and spent six years in high-end residential before switching to restoration. She’ll tell you reconstruction is harder than new construction because you’re solving someone else’s puzzle with half the pieces missing. Her crew knows to expect her “Friday walk” - a final inspection where she runs her hand along every new joint and checks paint sheen at three angles before she’ll sign the Haven Standard completion form.
Javier O., Service Coordinator
Javier answers the phones you actually reach when you call (619) 604-5535 at 3 a.m. He’s been with us since 2019 and has heard every version of “I don’t know if this is an emergency.” His job is to decide fast: dispatch now or schedule assessment. He’s not reading from a script. He’ll ask about water color (clear versus gray versus black), whether the source is stopped, if anyone’s turned off the breaker to wet outlets, and whether you can see buckling in the flooring. Javier coordinates directly with insurance adjusters during business hours and maintains our digital job folders so every photo, drying log, and written scope is where it needs to be when the claim gets reviewed. He lives in Santee, shops at the same Walmart on Mission Gorge Road as half our customers, and will occasionally recognize a voice from the Little League stands.
Taylor K., Apprentice Technician
Taylor joined us in 2023 after completing the restoration program at a San Diego trade school and is working toward WRT certification through the IICRC. Right now they shadow Marcus on water losses, run the extractors, set up the LGR dehumidifiers and air movers, and learn to read the daily moisture logs that make or break an insurance claim. Taylor’s detail-oriented in a way that matters on this job: they noticed on their third week that a competitor’s crew had missed a wet wall cavity in a Santee townhome because they hadn’t removed the baseboard. That find saved the homeowner a secondary mold remediation six months later. Taylor asks the questions that remind the rest of us what we’ve forgotten to explain, and they’re the reason we now include a plain-language summary with every technical drying report.
One Standard, Every Job
DryMark Restoration Santee operates under The Haven Standard, the same framework Alicia built in 2011 and applies across every independently owned and operated location in the network. That means Haven Standard, Clause 1: a written price before any work starts, delivered to you before the first air mover gets plugged in. It means a documented photo record on every visit, included as standard, not sold as an upgrade. It means the 365-Day Done Right Promise - a signed guarantee, not a verbal reassurance - stamped on every job folder we close. Our crew in Santee uses the same professional-grade drying equipment from Dri-Eaz, Phoenix, XPOWER, B-Air, and Injectidry, documented to IICRC, RIA, and IFA standards, that every Back to Dry location deploys. The moisture logs we produce turn restoration invoices into payable insurance claims because that was the problem this company was founded to solve. Whether we’re drying a slab foundation near Mast Park or rebuilding a kitchen in Sky Ranch, the standard doesn’t change. The people delivering it just happen to live here too.
Written by Alicia Brennan, Owner at DryMark Restoration Santee, serving Santee since 2011.