Every property service available in Merced
All 22 have a Merced page of their own, written from the city's creeks, floodplain and building years. Five answer around the clock; everything planned is scheduled from the form.
Emergency restoration and mitigation
Debris and hauling
Construction and reconstruction
Building envelope and structure
Site and paving
Maintenance
What Merced buildings need, and when
Highway 99, built in the 1960s, splits Merced into an older south and a newer north. Central and south Merced are the older areas of smaller homes and smaller lots, while the building of the 1970s and 1980s, apartments included, went north. The housing element counts 26,673 occupied homes, 12,357 of them over forty years old, with 2000 to 2009 the biggest decade at 6,271 units.
About 12.2 inches of rain a year falls, and nearly all of it between November and April. January averages 2.16 inches, February 2.11 and March 1.82, against a hundredth of an inch in July and none at all in August, and the July average maximum is 94.9 degrees. Paving, roofing, stucco and painting run through that dry stretch, and roof drains and detention basins are cleared before the first storms. The wettest year on record was 1983, at 24.18 inches.
Four creeks cross the city and the mapped floodplain is unusually wide. FEMA maps about 25 square miles of Merced as subject to the 100-year or more frequent flood, and the city accounts for 59 percent of the estimated losses in the county's 100-year floodplain. Bear Creek above McKee Road set its flood of record on 10 January 2023 at 26.18 feet, as the weather service river report records.
What happens on the banks decides how far the water travels. A state levee inspection on Bear Creek in July 2022 found vegetation had cut channel capacity by half, and in January 2023 water came over the banks on West North Bear Creek Drive. Most of the county's 281 paid flood losses since 1979 fell here, the county hazard plan records.
Merced areas served
Every Merced service page works each of these areas on its own, because a creek block and a north Merced tract fail differently.
Downtown Merced
Blocks between R and G Streets and 16th to 23rd, where many pre-1980 homes are rated suitable for rehabilitation.
Applegate Park and the Bear Creek blocks
The park runs along Bear Creek between M and R Streets, beside streets the City held under evacuation orders in January 2023.
North and South Bear Creek Drive
Where the creek came over the top of its banks in January 2023 and the water lifted cars onto fire hydrants.
West Merced at Thornton Avenue and Highway 140
The south-west end, where Bear Creek overflowed in 1969, 1997, 1998 and 2006 and flooded a residential section.
North Merced and Black Rascal Creek
Development of the 1970s and 1980s, apartments included, built to later curb, gutter and sidewalk standards.
Olive Avenue and M Street, the Merced Mall
A 1969 enclosed centre of 329,000 square feet on 53 acres, with housing densities raised around it from 1981.
Fahrens Creek and Fahrens Park
A basin in north-central Merced the City is designating as a trail, on a creek whose flow has been reduced.
Northeast Merced, the Bellevue Corridor and UC Merced
A 2.42 square mile plan area, mostly unincorporated, beside a campus with about 4,200 students living on it.
South Merced
Older communities of smaller homes and lots with many apartments, and more streets without sidewalks than elsewhere.
South and south-east industrial areas and the airport
Industrial zones at the city's edges by the freeway, the airport and the railroad, holding a large share of its jobs.
Highway 99 corridor
Between G Street and the Route 140 junction the freeway carries 44,000 to 62,000 vehicles a day.
16th Street and Route 59
Route 59 carries 23,000 to 27,500 vehicles a day, on the corridor planned for the high-speed rail station.
Questions from Merced owners and managers
The emergency trades work to the 120 to 140 minute window shown above, 24 hours a day, with crews coming down from the Modesto base. December and January tule fog and harvest truck traffic push any address toward the far end of that window. Planned work is arranged with the contractor assigned to the request once the scope is agreed.
Building permits, plan review and inspections run through the City's Inspection Services Division on West 18th Street and its online permit portal, and the contractor assigned to the request pulls the permit. Much of the Bellevue Corridor north-east of the city is still unincorporated county land, so the authority for a parcel there is established before the scope is set.
Yes. An owner with a downtown rental, a north Merced fourplex and a unit in the south-east industrial area sends one request per property, and the three keep separate files and schedules in the same client area. A loss that runs from drying into reconstruction stays on a single file.
Water damage restoration, fire and smoke damage, mold containment, storm damage and board-up, and biohazard cleanup carry the emergency line. Junk and debris hauling, roofing, stucco, dry rot, structural repair, paving, concrete, grading, construction, remodelling and maintenance are requested through the form and scheduled, with the exterior trades set around the dry months.
The county hazard plan counts 1,191 flood insurance policies in the city, 573 of them in AO zones, the most of any jurisdiction in the county. The City's storm water is carried into the irrigation district's canals and natural channels, and new development has to build percolation or detention basins that meter runoff into channels of limited capacity. An address is worth checking before the season starts.
Property services near Merced
