How DryMark Restoration Hackensack Was Born in Hackensack
We opened this branch in 2015, four years after DryMark started in 2011, because we kept getting calls from Bergen County homeowners who had heard about the drying logs. A homeowner in Hackensack had a finished basement flood after a water heater let go on a Sunday. Three companies came through. One quoted over the phone without seeing it. Another started tearing out drywall before taking a moisture reading. The third showed up with a fan from a big-box store and no dehumidifier. She found us through an adjuster in Newark who had paid a DryMark invoice in full because the documentation was already done, room by room, day by day.
That homeowner told us something that stuck. She said, “I just want to know what dry actually means, and I want someone to prove we got there.” We drove back to Hackensack the next week and signed the lease on a warehouse near Route 46. The promise we made that day was simple: we would bring the Haven Standard here, and we would never start a job without a written scope and a flat price. No door upsells. No scope creep. No “while we’re in here.” That is still the only way we work in Hackensack.
Alicia Brennan’s Personal Connection to the Damage Restoration Trade
Alicia Brennan got into this trade the hard way, by cleaning up after other people’s shortcuts. She started in 2011, the same year DryMark was founded, working as a mitigation tech for a company that treated documentation like an afterthought. She remembers the smell of the first job she had to redo, a mold remediation in a Teaneck colonial where the previous crew had sprayed bleach on visible spots and called it done. The homeowner was six months pregnant. The drywall behind the vanity was wet to 28 percent moisture content, well above the 16 percent that counts as dry. Alicia spent three days in a respirator, pulling out soggy insulation, running a negative air machine, logging readings every four hours. She gave the homeowner the report herself, page by page, and watched her shoulders drop.
That is the moment Alicia describes when people ask why she does this. Not the certificate, not the equipment, not the brand name. The drop of someone’s shoulders when they finally see proof that a problem is actually solved. She has been in crawlspaces where the joists were so wet they smelled like a forest floor after rain. She has stood in living rooms at 11 PM with a homeowner who just found their sump pump failed, and she has handed them a written scope before anyone touched a wall. If she were not doing this, she would probably be in some other trade where things either work or they do not, where you cannot talk your way around a bad measurement. She likes that restoration has a number attached. Dry is not a feeling. It is a reading.
What gets her out of bed is the same thing that got her into it: the gap between what homeowners are promised and what they are proven. She has spent over a decade closing that gap, one drying log at a time.
Meet Alicia Brennan - The Person Behind Every Job
Alicia Brennan is the Owner and Founder of DryMark Restoration Hackensack. She holds the state license required to perform mitigation and reconstruction work in New Jersey, and every pro working under her name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. Her training runs through RIA and IICRC protocols, and she has built her crew around the equipment standards that make documentation possible: Dri-Eaz and Phoenix dehumidification systems that log performance data, not just run time.
What makes Alicia different from a corporate technician is that she still reads every drying log before it goes to an adjuster. She lives in Bergen County. She runs her dog at Borg’s Woods in the mornings. She will not send a crew to a home in Hackensack with instructions she would not accept in her own. Her commitment to every customer is direct: you will get her cell number, you will get a written scope before work starts, and you will get the readings that prove your home is dry.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Hackensack Homeowners
Our values come from the Haven Standard, and we apply them here without exception.
Have it in writing. Every job starts with a flat price and a written scope. We learned this the hard way, watching homeowners in Hackensack sign vague work orders and get billed for “additional services” they never approved. Our policy is Clause 1: nothing happens until you have the document.
Arrive on schedule. We give a real window, name the technician, and text when they are on the way. Not because it is nice, but because a homeowner waiting for a mitigation crew is already living in chaos. Predictability is part of the service.
Verified crews. Every technician is background-checked, and their license number is on the page we leave with you. We do not send strangers into your home.
Evidence on every job. Photos and readings of what we actually found, not what we think was there. This is what turns a restoration invoice into a claim an insurer pays without a fight.
No surprises. No door upsell, no scope creep, no “while we’re in here.” If we find something unexpected, we stop, document it, and write a new scope before we proceed.
Our Credentials
State-licensed. Alicia Brennan holds the New Jersey state license required to perform mitigation and reconstruction work. We do not display the license number here because it belongs on file, not in marketing copy, but we will provide it on request before any work begins.
Insured and bonded. Every pro working under our name carries the coverage their state requires. This matters because if a technician floods your neighbor’s unit or disturbs asbestos they did not know was there, you are not left holding the policy.
Years of local experience. Alicia has been in this trade since 2011, and this branch has served Hackensack and the surrounding towns since 2015. We know the split-levels near Fanny Meyer Hillers Park, the older colonials with plaster and lath, the new construction that dries differently because the lumber was green when it went up.
Strong local reputation. We are not the biggest name in Bergen County, and we do not try to be. We are the name adjusters recognize because our documentation holds up, and homeowners recognize because we leave the readings behind.
Why this matters to you: damage restoration is the trade where the work is mostly invisible. The drywall goes back, the paint matches, and you are left hoping the cavity behind it is actually dry. Credentials do not guarantee honesty, but they create accountability. A licensed, insured technician with a documented record has something to lose. That is who we send to your home.
Rooted in Hackensack
This branch is based in Hackensack because the county seat draws work from every direction, but our service area runs through the towns we actually drive: Bogota and Lodi for the older housing stock near the river, Hasbrouck Heights and Ridgefield Park for the split-level neighborhoods, Little Ferry and Garfield for the garden apartments and converted commercial spaces, Leonia and Wood-Ridge for the mixed-era construction, Englewood and Palisades Park for the denser multifamily buildings, Wallington for the industrial-to-residential conversions. We know which basements flood first in a nor’easter and which attics grow mold in July because we have dried them, logged them, and proven them dry under the Haven Standard. Alicia lives here. The trucks are parked here. The drying logs are stored here. That is what locally operated means to us.
Written by Alicia Brennan, Owner at DryMark Restoration Hackensack, serving Hackensack, Bogota, Lodi, Hasbrouck Heights, Ridgefield Park, Little Ferry, Garfield, Leonia, Wood-Ridge, Englewood, Palisades Park, and Wallington since 2015.