Flood risk - how to evaluate

moonrakerz

Strange !

I have just walked down town to go to the Library. In the car park is an Environment Agency caravan with an exhibition of what to do to prevent/minimise flood damage.

SophieUK_2

Thanks for all the thoughts. The environment agency have confirmed over the phone that the house is outside the range of their flood area, so it's just the RMS map I'm worried about. Not sure what to do about this - I am the type of person who will worry and not enjoy my house if I keep thinking about the brook just sitting there waiting for me...may well have to pass I think, which could be completely paranoid first-time buyeresque but I can't spend that amount of money on something that's going to worry me.

PasturesNew

You can get doorway guards if you think the water can only come from the road. A waterproof seal is created when you slide something into the frame which is attached to the doorway. http://www.floodgate.ltd.uk/

Also, when looking at property, one clue in some houses is whether the plug points are 4' up the wall. I saw in a programme once one bloke who was often flooded, he'd simply tiled his ground floor and had a drain in it, so he could simply hose it down if/when it happened.

maggie111

Fell in love with a house that was in a "flooding risk" zone. So here's what I know -

Firstly, their HIP is available to anyone who wants a look and includes a seller questionnaire which includes information about flooding - so if you know they've lived there 10 years + (and houseprices.co.uk will tell you if the house has been sold in the past 10 years) that might help as they need to put in info on any claims they have made regarding flooding.

Secondly, I knew people in the local area, I said where the street was and they said "ooh... careful of flooding - the whole area was turned into a river - I went online and typed "*local area* flooding" and news articles came up about certain floods - these will mention certain roads. In fact, even Wikipedia had a section on the area on flooding!

With you being in a high risk area - there are no guarantees you can get building insurance - if you can't get that you can't get a mortgage - and you should definitely not buy the house!

Ultimately, looking on the house with the information we knew - we suddenly realised why it was such high risk (at the bottom of hill etc etc) and decided that even if we could get insurance etc, I didn't not want to have the worry of being devastated by a flood.