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 Santa Monica Team Behind DryMark Restoration Santa Monica
We’re the crew that shows up when water’s still moving through your walls or when smoke damage has settled into the plaster of a 1920s Santa Monica bungalow. Every person on this page has been background-checked, licensed, and verified before they ever pulled into your driveway. What ties us together isn’t a manual. It’s that we all work under the same written promise: a price before we start, a photo record when we leave, and the 365-Day Done Right Promise stamped on every job sheet.
Our People
Alicia Brennan, Owner
I started DryMark Restoration Santa Monica in 2011 after six years as a claims adjuster, watching homeowners lose tens of thousands on legitimate water damage claims because the restoration company didn’t document the loss properly. The gap between what happened and what could be proved to an insurance desk was the problem I built this company to solve. I still review every written scope before it goes out, and I personally sign the 365-Day Done Right Promise on every job we complete in Santa Monica. When I’m not on a loss site, I’m usually testing new moisture mapping protocols or arguing with adjusters about the difference between Category 2 and Category 3 water classification. I keep a 1948 copy of the Santa Monica Evening Outlook in my desk drawer as a reminder that this city’s been rebuilding itself for a long time.
Marcus T., Lead Water Technician
Marcus has been running drying systems for nine years, and he’s the person we call when a multi-unit Ocean Avenue building takes a hit from a failed riser or a Santa Monica Canyon mudslide pushes groundwater through a foundation wall. He’s IICRC-certified in Water Damage Restoration (WRT) and Applied Structural Drying (ASD), and he’s trained specifically on our Dri-Eaz and Injectidry systems for hardwood floor rescue without demolition. Marcus is the one who explains vapor pressure differential to homeowners in plain terms: basically, we’re creating conditions where the air wants to pull moisture out of your studs faster than the moisture wants to stay there. He commutes from Mid-City on a 1982 Honda motorcycle that he’s rebuilt three times, and he treats every drying chamber like that bike, checking pressures and readings with the same obsessive attention.
Elena R., Senior Mold Remediation Installer
Elena handles our containment builds and negative air setups, the physical barriers that keep a mold job in Santa Monica from becoming a cross-contamination problem across three condo units. She’s certified through the IICRC in Mold Remediation (AMRT) and has completed specialized training in tertiary drying, the final phase where we drop humidity low enough that dormant spores can’t reactivate. Elena grew up in a household where her father restored boats in Marina del Rey, so she learned early that moisture hides in places you can’t see, and that the right documentation matters more than the fastest cleanup. She keeps a collection of failed containment photos from competitor jobs on her phone, not to mock them, but to show new apprentices exactly what happens when you skip the poly-seal step around a HVAC return. Her detail work is why we hit our clearance targets on the first test, ninety-plus percent of the time.
David K., Service Coordinator
David answers the phones and dispatches crews, and he’s the voice you’ll hear when you call (213) 816-0810 at 2 a.m. because your dishwasher supply line let go into your kitchen subfloor. He’s been with us since 2017, and he’s the reason we can say a live person answers every call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no voicemail trees and no next-business-day callbacks while water is still migrating. David coordinates directly with insurance adjusters, uploads our photo-documented assessments to carrier portals, and makes sure every homeowner gets their written scope before anyone touches a tool. He grew up in Palms and still lives there, and he knows which Santa Monica streets flood first in a hard rain and which building managers on Wilshire Boulevard have preferred vendor requirements. He keeps a handwritten log of every after-hours call he’s handled, thirteen hundred and counting, because he says the pattern teaches you something about where this city’s infrastructure is failing.
Jin S., Restoration Apprentice
Jin joined us in 2023 after completing a construction technology program at Santa Monica College, and he’s working through his IICRC Water Damage Restoration Technician certification while learning fire and smoke damage cleanup in the field. We paired him with Marcus for his first six months specifically because Marcus’s methodical approach matches Jin’s own temperament. Jin’s specialty so far has been content manipulation, the careful work of moving and documenting personal property before demolition begins, which sounds simple until you’re inventorying a lifetime of records in a flooded ground-floor unit on Montana Avenue. He speaks Korean with his grandmother in Koreatown every Sunday, and he’s the one who noticed that our standard photo documentation wasn’t capturing cabinet toe-kick moisture consistently, so he proposed the low-angle shot protocol we now use on every kitchen loss.
One Standard, Every Job
DryMark Restoration Santa Monica operates under The Haven Standard, the same written framework that governs every independently owned and operated location in our network. Haven Standard, Clause 1 requires a written price before any work starts, every time, with no exceptions and no scope-creep additions once our crew is inside your home. That clause exists because I watched too many homeowners get ambushed by open-ended estimates when they were already under water, literally and figuratively. Every technician on this page carries a tablet loaded with our pricing database, and every scope is generated on-site, reviewed, and signed before the first air mover gets plugged in.
The photo record isn’t an upsell. It’s included as a standard deliverable on every visit, documented to IICRC, RIA, and IFA standards, with daily moisture logs that turn restoration invoices into payable insurance claims. Our equipment, the Dri-Eaz, Phoenix, XPOWER, B-Air, and Injectidry systems, is deployed by technicians who’ve been trained specifically on the psychrometric data those machines produce. And the 365-Day Done Right Promise, a signed guarantee stamped on every job sheet, means if we miss something, we come back and make it right. Not because it’s marketing. Because it’s The Haven Standard, and every person on this team knows exactly which clause they’re standing behind.
Written by Alicia Brennan, Owner at DryMark Restoration Santa Monica, serving Santa Monica since 2011.