Water Damage Restoration in Ivywild

Updated November 12, 2026

Ivywild is a small neighborhood just south of downtown Colorado Springs in 80905, west of Cascade Avenue and along Cheyenne Creek. William Jenkins platted it in 1888 by splitting his ranch into 43 lots, and it stayed outside city limits until the 1980 annexation that also brought in Broadmoor. The old Ivywild School on South Cascade, opened in 1916 and now a mix of restaurants and shops, anchors the area. Around it are modest bungalows and cottages, some of them catalog homes from Sears and similar companies.

The typical Ivywild house

Most homes here are small one-story or one-and-a-half story bungalows on narrow lots, built in the early and middle decades of the 1900s and remodeled many times since. They tend to sit low to the ground, with a partial cellar, a crawlspace or a basement added later. That combination makes them vulnerable in a few specific ways:

• Cellars and crawlspaces with block, brick or rubble walls that let in groundwater whenever the soil gets saturated.
• Old sewer laterals of clay or cast iron that crack and root-clog, sending backups into the lowest drain.
• Galvanized and patched supply lines, often mixed with newer copper or PEX, joined with fittings of every era.
• Uninsulated pipes along exterior walls or in a crawlspace that freeze when a warm afternoon turns into a below-zero night.
• Swamp coolers on roofs or in windows, with feed lines that split if they are not drained before winter.

Cheyenne Creek and storm water

Cheyenne Creek runs through the neighborhood on its way to Fountain Creek. In September 2013, heavy rain pushed the creek over its banks near Cheyenne Road and crews evacuated homes nearby. Most of the time the creek is calm, but a long soaking rain or a stalled summer thunderstorm raises groundwater in low-lying lots. If your basement takes on water during those events, see storm and flood damage and the post on window well flooding.

What to do right now

Close the main shutoff if the water is from plumbing. In many Ivywild homes it is in the cellar, crawlspace or a pit near the street. Shut off power to any wet area; older wiring and water are a dangerous mix. If the water is from a drain, stop using all fixtures. If it is coming in from outside, move belongings up and out of the way and stay out of standing water near outlets. Then call for a crew, and tell the dispatcher whether the water is clean, from a drain or from outside. That answer decides which equipment and protective gear come on the truck, and it helps the crew plan before they pull up.

Cleaning and drying older materials

Original fir floors, plaster walls and solid wood trim are worth saving when possible. Crews often remove baseboards to dry the wall cavity and use floor mats to pull water from hardwood. Water from outside or from a sewer line is treated as contaminated, so porous materials it touched usually come out; the sewage cleanup page explains the steps. In the dry climate here, clean-water drying often wraps up within a week, though a soaked crawlspace may take longer.

What drives the cost

The total depends on the type of water, the number of rooms affected, how long the water sat, and how much original material can be dried rather than replaced. Crawlspace work and tight access take longer. If a plumber needs to run a camera down the sewer line to find a break, that visit is usually billed by the plumber, not the restoration company. The restoration company gives you a written estimate after inspecting.

Insurance and local details

A sudden pipe burst is commonly covered; seepage, flooding and wear are usually not, and sewer backups typically require an added endorsement. Read the insurance guide before filing. Colorado Springs Utilities provides water and power, and PPRBD handles permits. Neighbors in the Broadmoor area sit upstream on the same creek, and Old Colorado City has similar older housing.