Denton home repairs after hail, a hard freeze or a rising creek

Before you read on

What this Denton page is built on

Our crews did a lot of work across Dallas–Fort Worth in earlier years, and we are reopening in North Texas now. No Denton job is logged in our current records, so you will find no Denton photos or job stories here.

Instead, this page collects what a Denton owner should know before a repair starts: the storms the National Weather Service recorded here, what the Census Bureau says about the housing, the clay that was first described a few miles outside town, and the city rules for roofs, foundations, historic districts and the floodplain. Every fact links to the office that published it.

The storm record

Three dates that explain most Denton repair calls

Hail is the steady one. From 2015 through 2024, NOAA's Storm Events Database lists 355 hail reports in Denton County, and 60 of them were stones 2 inches across or larger.

We counted those rows ourselves in the Storm Events Database, which the National Weather Service fills from spotter, public and radar reports. Three entries stand out for houses inside the city:

1. April 11, 2016: grapefruit-sized hail

   One long-lived supercell crossed the northern suburbs late that afternoon. A public report put 4-inch hail in east Denton, and the airport weather station measured a 66 mph gust a few minutes later. Stones that size break shingles and decking, so the water damage often shows up inside, days afterwards.

2. April 30, 2019: a tornado through wooded streets

   A tornado formed on the east side of the Texas Woman's University campus and moved northeast. The weather service's account notes large trees snapped or uprooted in northeast Denton, several of them falling on homes. A tree through a roof is a water job and a framing job at once.

3. February 14–17, 2021: the long freeze

   The county logged 3 to 6 inches of snow, then more. Lows on February 15 and 16 fell between 5 and −7 °F, wind chills sat between 0 and −20 °F, and the county entry records an extreme amount of damage to pipes.

After hail

Does every new roof in Denton need a permit?

Yes. Since June 1, 2022, the City of Denton requires a roof permit for every residential roof or re-roof job, and it has to be issued before work starts, tear-off included.

That rule is on the city's residential roofing page. The details are worth knowing when hail has you comparing contractors:

Our roof, siding and gutter repairs after storms and hail are documented for the claim like the rest of our damage work. More on storm and hail damage repair.

When it freezes

A city with its own power company, and what that means in a freeze

Most Denton homes buy electricity from Denton Municipal Electric, a public power utility owned by the community. In a grid emergency it still has to follow the statewide grid operator's orders to cut load.

The city's load shedding page explains the order: residential circuits are among the first used, rotated across town so each one is off for roughly half an hour to an hour at a time. In a hard freeze, a cold house plus a pipe in an outside wall is how a split line starts.

• While it is still frozen

  Know where your water shut-off is before the cold arrives. A pipe that froze may not leak until it thaws, so check ceilings, sink cabinets and the garage wall when the temperature climbs back.

• When water starts to run

  Shut the water off and keep clear of wet outlets and fixtures. A licensed plumber repairs the pipe itself.

• What we do next

  We extract the water, open only what the moisture meter says is wet, dry the structure to the readings and then rebuild it. See water damage mitigation and rebuild after damage.

Who lives here

Half owners, half renters: Denton's housing in numbers

Of 56,664 occupied homes in Denton, the Census Bureau counts exactly as many rented as owned: 28,332 each. The median home was built in 1997.

Those are American Community Survey estimates for 2020–2024 (tenure, table B25003; median year built, table B25035). Behind them are four kinds of Denton repair.

Historic districts

Oak-Hickory, West Oak and Bell Avenue: approval before exterior work

If your house is in one of Denton's three local historic districts, or is a designated landmark, exterior repairs and alterations need a Certificate of Appropriateness from the city.

The city's Certificate of Appropriateness page names the three districts: Oak-Hickory, the West Oak Area and Bell Avenue. Ordinary maintenance and small exterior fixes, like repainting or repairing an architectural feature, can be approved by the Historic Preservation Officer. Bigger changes, such as switching materials, an addition or a demolition, go to the Historic Landmark Commission, which generally meets on the second Monday of each month.

On a storm repair, matching what was there keeps the path short, and changing a material adds a step. Water removal, drying and mold work inside the house are not exterior work, so they can start while the exterior paperwork moves.

Floodplain

Cooper, Pecan and Hickory: Denton's creeks and the 50 percent rule

Denton's flood hazard areas run mainly along Cooper Creek, Pecan Creek, North Pecan Creek, Hickory Creek, Dry Fork Hickory Creek and their tributaries.

That list, and the rules below, come from the city's flood protection page:

• Substantial damage

  A house in the FEMA floodplain counts as substantially damaged when restoring it would cost 50 percent or more of its market value before the damage. Then it has to be brought up to current code, which may mean raising it.

• Higher floors, and the AC too

  In and near the floodplain, Denton sets finished floors above the base flood elevation with extra freeboard, and the rule covers equipment that serves the house, such as the air conditioning unit.

• Insurance timing

  Basic homeowner's policies do not cover flood. Flood insurance is available to everyone in the city, with a 30-day wait before a new policy takes effect.

Look up your address on FEMA's Flood Map Service Center, and ask the city's Engineering Department whether an elevation certificate for your house is already on file.

The ground

Sanger clay: a soil first described just south of Denton

The USDA's official record for the Sanger soil series puts its type location in Denton County, a few miles south of the city. It is clay or silty clay from top to bottom, 40 to 60 percent clay.

The Sanger series description from the Natural Resources Conservation Service gives it a high shrink-swell potential: when it dries, cracks 1 to 3 inches wide reach more than 20 inches down. Not every lot sits on Sanger clay; the free Web Soil Survey shows the soil mapped under yours.

Soil that swells and shrinks moves a slab, and the pipes in it. Slab leaks are one of the water problems we handle, and foundation repair for clay-soil movement is part of our work. In Denton, every foundation repair needs a permit with a repair plan signed and sealed by a Texas registered engineer, and the engineer's sealed report is uploaded before the final inspection (city foundation repair page).

Mold under Texas law

If a Denton leak turned into mold

Texas keeps mold testing and mold removal apart. On any project we remediate, the assessment comes from an independent licensed mold assessor, and we never assess and remediate the same Texas project.

That separation is set by Texas Occupations Code 1958.155. Once the mold is out, everything it touched is replaced with new material, never cleaned and reused. The full process is on mold remediation.

Paperwork

The papers that stay with the house

Denton does not issue a certificate of occupancy for residential alterations. When a permitted repair passes its final inspection, the proof is the Final Inspection Report in the city's eTRAKiT permit portal.

That is from the city's residential permits page, which also says permits applied for since June 1, 2022 follow the 2021 International Building Codes. Keep that report with our documentation: photos, moisture readings and a line-item estimate in the industry's standard estimating format.

For a covered repair you pay only your deductible, and your insurer pays us the rest directly; upgrades you choose are priced separately. We are the repair contractor, not the adjuster: we send our itemized estimate to your adjuster and answer questions about our scope, and the claim stays between you and your insurer. More on working with insurance. The first consultation and quote are free, and financing is available through our lending partner.

Denton questions

What Denton homeowners ask us to check first