Disasters come in all shapes and sizes.
Did a dinner guest errantly paint your white carpet with a nice burgundy spatter of a bold pinot noir? That’s a disaster. Did your new four-legged friend decide that your area rug was as good a place as any to do its business? That’s a disaster.
But those are all lowercase disasters. Disasters with a capital D, now they can be a little harder to deal with.
That water heater that breaks while you’re out of town, turning your home’s ground floor into the world’s most expensive wading pool. The fire that destroys your kitchen, while snaking tendrils of damaging smoke throughout the house. The downed tree during a hurricane that punches a hole in your roof, turning it into a funnel for rainwater.
These are all Disasters with a capital D.
Fortunately, for those of us in Beaufort County, we can turn to High Tide Restoration and Cleaning for relief. When Ryan Moore founded High Tide in 2001, he was just one guy with a van who could take care of disasters with a lowercase d. As a full-service cleaning company, he offered service for tile, upholstery and area rugs that needed a little bit more than the average cleaning.
Eventually, High Tide would take its comprehensive approach to mitigating those little disasters and apply them to those big ones. Since 2020, Chris Wells has been the man on the scene, making sure every Disaster gets immediate attention. And since these kinds of Disasters never respect anyone’s schedule, they’re always ready at a moment’s notice.
“We pride ourselves on that,” Wells said. “We are 24/7/365. So if it happens at two in the morning, we’ve got an on-call team whose goal is to be to the property within 60 minutes, even in the middle of the night, after hours, or on holidays.”
And for those big Disasters, cleaning up is just step one.
“A lot of times you call us because there’s an emergency, and we come in and do the work, but then you’ve been thinking about replacing the flooring or the cabinets,” Wells said. “So, what we end up doing is working with the homeowner on the claim, getting the money from their insurance company, and then we do a separate scope of work for the work that they need done, plus the work that they want done.”
One great example can be seen in the before and after pictures on these pages. When the air conditioning system broke while this house was vacant, mold quickly spread throughout the property.
“When that happens, everything is thrown away. From something as big as drywall, cabinets, and tiles to something as small as a picture frame, it’s all thrown away,” Wells said. “You take the house back to the 2-by-4s, then you reverse build the house. Everything is hand cleaned and air dried, then you rebuild the house back. And that happened in less than 10 days.”
It’s a remarkable turnaround for such thorough service, but that’s the idea. That’s the ultimate goal shared by everyone in a company that has grown from one guy in a van to 30 professionals servicing Beaufort and Jasper counties. It stems from a culture Moore has fostered of empowering each employee and going above and beyond to let them know their value as a teammate. By fostering a culture that looks out for employees and being generous both with his guidance and his payroll, Moore has cultivated a team of longtime employees. And each of them shares a common goal of doing the job right.
“I’m proud of that, to have a good culture, and to have a team that has a strong work ethic and a pride in doing what’s best,” Wells said. “Because every day is a challenge and tomorrow’s customer is not promised.”
What is promised, whether it’s a disaster or a Disaster, is that High Tide Cleaning and Restoration will always be there, faster to the disaster.
Owner/President – Ryan Moore & Vice President – Chris Wells
