Meet the Team - DryMark Restoration Huntington Beach

Meet the Huntington Beach Team Behind DryMark Restoration Huntington Beach

Every crew that walks into a flooded kitchen or a smoke-damaged condo in Huntington Beach carries the same rulebook: Haven Standard, Clause 1, written price before work starts; photo record on every visit; 365-Day Done Right Promise signed and stamped. What makes our local team different is that they actually read it. These are the people who show up at 2 a.m. when the slab leak hits, who know which Huntington Beach complexes built in the ’70s have the polybutylene risers, and who will stop mid-job to explain why your moisture meter reads 18 percent and your drywall is still toast.

Our People

Alicia Brennan, Owner

I started Back to Dry in 2011 after six years as a claims adjuster watching homeowners lose tens of thousands because a contractor forgot to photograph the subfloor or wrote a scope in chicken scratch the carrier rejected. The documentation gap was costing people their coverage, and nobody was treating that like the emergency it was. So I built a company around the opposite: every job gets a written price before anyone touches a tool, every visit gets a photo record, and every customer gets a signed 365-Day Done Right Promise under The Haven Standard. I’ve personally reviewed the drying logs on more than 12,000 homes since then. I still catch crews off-guard when I ask for the tertiary drying plan before they’ve finished setting containment. Old habits. The dry aside I’ll drop here: I’ve seen the invoice when a contractor skips the second moisture reading. It’s never the contractor who pays it.

Marcus T., Lead Technician

Marcus has been running water damage mitigation crews in Orange County for fourteen years, and he still treats every slab leak like it’s his first. He’s IICRC-certified in Water Damage Restoration (WRT) and Applied Structural Drying (ASD), which means he can read a psychrometric chart the way most people read a weather app, vapor pressure differential and all. His specialty is the tricky Huntington Beach jobs: the ground-floor units in Seacliff Village where the clay soil holds moisture for weeks, the older homes near downtown with original plaster lath that fools moisture meters. Human detail: Marcus keeps a collection of failed drywall samples in his truck, labeled by year and neighborhood, to show customers exactly what saturated gypsum board looks like at 48 hours versus 72. He calls it his “museum of poor timing.” He’s not wrong.

Diana R., Senior Installer / Reconstruction Lead

Diana came up through finish carpentry before crossing into restoration reconstruction, which means she notices the quarter-inch gap in baseboard that most crews caulk and pray over. She runs our rebuild division across Huntington Beach and the surrounding service area, specializing in fire and smoke damage where the structural work is only half the battle, the other half being the invisible odor penetration that sends homeowners back to hotels. She’s RIA-certified in Fire and Smoke Restoration and has a particular method for sealing framing members with shellac-based primer before close-in inspection, something she developed after a 2019 job in Huntington Harbour where standard Kilz kept bleeding nicotine stains through three coats. Human detail: Diana will absolutely stop a job to argue with a supplier about the grain match on oak replacement flooring. She has won every argument. The suppliers know her number now.

James K., Service Coordinator

James is the voice you actually reach when you call our Huntington Beach line at 2 a.m., because our phones are answered live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no voicemail trees, no “leave a message and we’ll call back tomorrow while your water is still moving.” He’s been with us since 2019 and has a preternatural ability to calm down a homeowner who’s standing in three inches of category two water while explaining what “category two” actually means in plain language. He coordinates dispatch, documents the initial loss report, and starts the photo record chain before the truck even rolls. He’s also the person who calls your adjuster directly, with the initial moisture readings already in hand, so the claim doesn’t sit in limbo for three days. Human detail: James keeps a running bet with the field crews about which Huntington Beach neighborhood will generate the most slab leak calls during any given Santa Ana wind event. He maintains a spreadsheet. He will show it to you if asked.

Elena V., Apprentice Technician

Elena joined us in 2023 after four years in commercial HVAC, which gave her an unusual head start on understanding air movement and dehumidification load calculations, the math that determines whether your drying chamber actually works or just makes noise. She’s completing her IICRC WRT certification and already runs secondary extraction and equipment placement on most jobs, supervised by Marcus until she tests out. Her specialty interest is the growing category of “smart home” water losses in newer Huntington Beach builds, where a failed leak detector or a burst PEX fitting behind a wall of spray foam creates a contained flood that doesn’t announce itself until the humidity sensor in the Nest starts screaming. Human detail: Elena takes photos of every equipment setup she builds, not for the customer record, but for her own study binder. She has 847 photos of dehumidifier placement. She is deeply aware this is unusual and does not care.

One Standard, Every Job

Every person on this page works under The Haven Standard, the same framework we established in 2011 and apply across every independently owned and operated location in our network. That means Haven Standard, Clause 1: a written price delivered before any work starts, with no scope-creep additions once the crew is inside your home. It means a documented photo record on every visit, included as standard, never an upsell. It means professional-grade drying systems from Dri-Eaz, Phoenix, XPOWER, B-Air, and Injectidry, with daily moisture logs formatted to IICRC, RIA, and IFA standards so your restoration invoice becomes a payable insurance claim instead of a negotiation. And it means the 365-Day Done Right Promise, signed and stamped, not a verbal assurance that evaporates when the truck leaves. Whether you’re in a condo off Beach Boulevard or a single-family near Bolsa Chica, the standard doesn’t change. The people delivering it just happen to know your neighborhood.

Written by Alicia Brennan, Owner at DryMark Restoration Huntington Beach, serving Huntington Beach since 2011.