Water, fire and mold damage restoration in Lakeland, Tennessee

Lakeland is one of the communities of Shelby County carrying a page of its own on this site. Incorporated city with a 2020 population of 13,904 on 23 square miles, built around Garner Lake.

Twenty road miles from downtown on the northeast side, and the only quick approach is I-40 to the Canada Road exit and then north. The road network was shaped by the lake and by what used to be an amusement park, and it has relatively few through streets: most addresses come off two or three collectors by way of a long cul-de-sac. That is a genuine constraint on access and on staging, and it means a blocked court blocks everything behind it. Where equipment has to reach a house at the end of a court, the cord and hose runs are simply longer.

Losses concentrate at the lake and at the bottom of graded streets, and those two are not the same thing. Lots near the water have a table close to the surface and crawl spaces that were shallow to begin with. Lots at the low end of an inland street have vents sitting nearly at grade with downspouts discharging into the same corner. The third concentration is mechanical rather than geological, and it sits above the ceiling in houses that are all about the same age and were all fitted out the same way.

The utility arrangement here is the reverse of most of the county: water comes from MLGW while the city handles sewer. So a supply leak and a sewer backup are two different organizations. Which one you need turns on a question most people have not thought about at two in the morning, namely whether the water is arriving or failing to leave. It is worth writing both numbers down somewhere outside the house, along with where the meter is, because the meter is what settles which system is involved.

Lakeland had 612 residents in 1980, 1,204 in 1990, 6,862 in 2000 and 12,430 in 2010. There is effectively no pre-1990 housing here at any scale. What that means for a loss is unusually consistent: one generation of construction methods, one generation of plumbing materials, and subdivisions where the same detail either works everywhere or fails everywhere.

The municipal record for Lakeland

Lakeland incorporated in 1977 under the general-law manager-commission charter and sits at 397 feet, the highest ground in this part of Shelby County. Its growth is the steepest on the site: 612 people in 1980, 1,204 in 1990, 6,862 in 2000, 12,430 in 2010 and 13,904 in 2020. Almost everything here is therefore newer than 1995 and built on slab, which shifts the water-damage picture sharply — very little crawl space, and leaks that surface a long way from where they start. The city runs sewer; its lagoon discharges to the Loosahatchie at river mile 24.1.

Lakeland's only postal code is 38002, and it shares it with Arlington and with the northeastern part of Bartlett. The postal service's preferred name for 38002 is Arlington, which is why the coverage tables list it there. Three municipalities, one postal code, and the parcel rather than the postcode decides which one a house is in.