Meet the Team - Dryden Restoration New York

Meet the New York Team Behind Dryden Restoration New York

We’re not a franchise with rotating crews from three states away. The people who show up at your door in New York are the same people who answer your questions, write your estimate, and sign off on the job. Each of them has worked water, mold, and fire losses in this city long enough to know that a flooded co-op unit in Yorkville behaves differently than a soaked brownstone basement in Park Slope. What unites the crew is simple: we give you a written price before work starts, we use the same professional-grade equipment on every job, and we don’t leave until the place is actually dry. Carl Brandt built the team that way on purpose.

Call (315) 924-6992

Our People

Carl Brandt, Owner

Carl founded Dryden Restoration New York in 2005. He started running water-damage crews before moisture mapping was standard practice, and he’s personally walked thousands of affected basements, kitchens, and ceiling cavities across the five boroughs. Carl holds the company to IICRC, RIA, and IFA-aligned standards, but he’ll tell you the certification matters less than what it forces you to do: measure, document, and stand behind the result. He instituted the 365-Day Done Right Promise as a written guarantee, not a verbal one, because he got tired of watching homeowners get burned by crews that disappeared after the check cleared. Carl still reviews every large loss estimate himself.

Marcus T., Lead Water Damage Technician

Marcus has been with Dryden for nine years and runs most of the water extraction and structural drying jobs in Manhattan and the Bronx. He’s certified in applied structural drying and handles the Dri-Eaz and Phoenix fleet daily, which means he’s the one watching RH levels as they actually fall, not just trusting a fan count. Marcus worked through hundreds of post-storm basement floods and older apartment retrofits, and he’s the first to admit that a high-rise unit with a burst riser is its own kind of puzzle. He has a habit of photographing everything before touch, which comes in handy when insurance adjusters start asking questions. Off the clock, he’s restoring a 1970s motorcycle in a Queens garage, which he calls “training for patience.”

Rosa M., Mold Remediation Specialist

Rosa joined Dryden six years ago and leads the mold remediation side of the business, including containment setup, air scrubbing, and post-remediation clearance. She came from commercial restoration work before that, which gave her a lot of time on the XPOWER and B-Air units she now runs on residential jobs. Rosa is the reason our mold projects include clear written documentation of what was contained, what was removed, and what the retest showed. She grew up in a very old house, as she puts it, so water intrusion “doesn’t scare her, but it does make her thorough.” She’s the team member most likely to tell a homeowner what they don’t need done, not just what they do.

Darnell B., Service Coordinator

Darnell is the live voice on the phone at 3 a.m., which means he’s often the first person a homeowner talks to when the ceiling just gave way or the sump pump quit. He’s been doing dispatch and triage work for seven years, most of them with restoration companies. Darnell knows what questions to ask first: how deep is the water, which rooms are affected, when did it start, is the breaker still on. He schedules the crew and makes sure the equipment that leaves the shop matches the job on the books. Homeowners in Yonkers and the northern boroughs will recognize his voice because Darnell tends to pick up on the third ring. He keeps a notable collection of New York sports memorabilia and will not discuss it during a sewage backup call.

One Standard, Every Job

Every member of the New York team works under The Kingswell Way, the operating rules that Carl adopted when Dryden joined the Kingswell family of independent restoration businesses. They are not just phrasing. Our technicians say the price before the work, show up in the window we gave, leave the job site cleaner than we found it, and hand the customer the written guarantee on the way out. Dri-Eaz, Phoenix, XPOWER, B-Air, and Injectidry equipment is checked and maintained by the people actually running it in the field, which keeps the drying calibration honest. Marcus, Rosa, Darnell, and Carl all carry the same standard, and they will all tell you the same thing: if a covered repair fails inside 365 days, the return visit costs you nothing under the Done Right Promise. Call (315) 924-6992 and you’re not talking to an answering service. You’re talking to Darnell.

Written by Carl Brandt, Owner at Dryden Restoration New York, serving New York since 2005.