stop your house flooding

[Evil Sid]

http://www.warrington-worldwide.co.uk/articles/17594/1/MP-welcomes-simple-flooding-solution/Page1.html

 

from the front page. seems an enterprising business man has come up with a solution to help stop your house from flooding. Watertight doors, obvious now that somebody has thought of it and with the recent inclement weather i would think he will be onto a winner.

 

However a thought occurs, if they stopped building houses in places that are prone to flooding then there would not be a need for them would there? there seems to have been a proliferation of house applications recently where the site has been on a flood plain or on land that is prone to flooding. I know from recent articles that we are in need of new "affordable" housing stock but surely there is land that is not liable to be flooded at the first heavy mist available around the area or am i being just a tad too naive.

[Davy51]

Yes ,considering some of these places that flood are among the most beautiful in the country ,there could be historic reasons of flooding as to why they haven't been built on sooner. Maybe houses on stilts would be an answer  , Anyway whatever happened to building on brown field sites ? There must be scope for that in Britain's industrial wasteland .

[observer]

It appears so obvious Sid; don't build on the flood plain or if you do, build on stilts; but the EA and our Planners seem to ignore it.  However, water-tight doors may not be the total answer, as some properties either have basements or air circulation space under their floor boards, vented from outside. The water would be in the ground and would rise up through the floor boards anyway. Dave, I presume requirements to remove contaminated land, deters developers from "brown field", plus many aren't building anyway, but using them as "land banks", but use of brown field sites supposed to be a planning priority.

[inky pete]

As Obs says, watertight doors are useless since cavity wall houses all have airbricks to ventilate the cavities, sewers and drains that the water will enter through, and ground water will simply rise up through the floors anyway.

[Dizzy]

New(er) houses aren't built like that anymore though are they ?

 

Had to laugh earlier though as I was telling my other hlaf about the new solution from the news page, how good it was and how I was suprised nobody from the Environment Agency etc had though of that before.

..........and he just stared at me with one of those long and questioning looks like only a mother can usually do when you are in BIG trouble.

 

then he quietly replied... "well I did 2 years ago when there were floods and you just said naah that will already have been thought of or tried".  Then out came his little notepad  that he scribles his design thoughts and plans in from time as evidence.  OK so clearly it was a good idea after all 

 

He had another idea for older houses with airbricks too and/or ones who don't want plastic doors.... but I'm saying NOTHING.. patent pending ha ha

[inky pete]

New build houses still have airbricks in the outer skin, and since the inner skin of newbuilds tends to be timber frame with insulation panels these days you REALLY don't want to get the inner skin wet!

 

You can get supposedly watertight covers for airbricks, but any sustained flooding is always going to find its way in. The brickwork and mortar itself isn't actually watertight enough to hold back flood water for days on end.

 

Maybe stilts isn't the answer, but I've seen a number of 3 storey mews houses built in recent years with garage and utility room on the ground floor, and bedrooms and living rooms upstairs. That sort of layout with a two skin brick construction for the lower floor would seem to me to be a lot more flood resilient and easier to dry out than most. Unfortunately, the new disability access requirements within the building regs make it almost impossible to build houses with the living area upstairs.

[Dizzy]

All the new houses along the Manchester Ship Canal not far from us have all been built 3 storey with kitchens & little chill out areas ground floor (some have garages too) and 2nd floors are living room plus a bedroom/bathroom and third floors are other bedrooms.

 

I think that's more to do with the small footprints and cramming so many into such a small parcel of land though.

 

At the end of the day anyone who buys a house on land that is know to be a possible flood area is pretty damn stupid.

[observer]

Part of the problem IS the built environment itself, with fast run off of water, and no land to soak up the excess. 3 storey houses with G/floor garages would minimise damage to property (not cars of course!). Plus high rise flats.