Preparedness for when

sabretoothtigger

I was thinking it might be clever to buy a house in an area now suffering regular flooding.
And hopefully its now much cheaper to buy in that area. Then just put some real thought into making it flood proof.
I reckon its possible and fears of these things are going to save more money off the price then it costs to secure?

nuatha

mardatha wrote: »

And I'm on a hill at 1000ft so if I flood, YER ALL DOOMED!

You might find that some of us have found our way to yours before the water gets that far.
Though I'd probably head for Hedgehope if we were expecting that depth of flooding.

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

I was thinking it might be clever to buy a house in an area now suffering regular flooding.
And hopefully its now much cheaper to buy in that area. Then just put some real thought into making it flood proof.
I reckon its possible and fears of these things are going to save more money off the price then it costs to secure?

You could spend a lot of money on flood proofing, and if you aren't there when the flood arrives ...
Its not an option I would choose, though I know someone who bought a farmhouse that was prone to flooding from a burn that ran nearby - over £100,000 pound later, he was still being flooded, a number of the defences he'd been advised to put in place made the floods worse. Flood waters have to go somewhere, which was the purpose of flood plains. If you build anti flood walls, generally the flooding will happen upsteam and may well come inside the flood walls from a different direction - and the wall then impedes drainage.

One to two foot of water will float a car (and wipe out any garden you have planted). If you look at previous floods in an area, you'll have an idea of the depth you need to waterproof to, though I'd want a substantial margin above this. You'd be looking at specialist doors, windows, blocking air vents as well as treating walls. You'd also want to look at cleanup preps - a lot of flood water is contaminated with raw sewage.

If you go ahead with this, I'd be interested in hearing what preps you consider.
Good luck

vanoonoo

morning all - merry seasonal festivities to one and all x

GreyQueen

MrsAtobe wrote: »

Any water tanks above you?

Good point. It happens; there are tower blocks with huge water tanks on their roofs............ every floor in the building gets a drenching when she blows.

The trouble with water is that you can't compress it. Even freezing only expands the volume. A floodplain allows it to spread out, to the point where it may end up only inches deep and then drain away slowly.

We humans don't like floodplains. It offends our sense that every inch of the world ought to be put to some kind of use or other. For example, in my hometown, with its Iron Age origins, there are several rivers and streams which come together in the valley bottom. This is a barely-preceptable valley, by the standards of my part of southern England, not some proper valley which you might encounter in the West or North. It also has a fair few springs bubbling up there.

Until modern water management techniques and the regular dredging and partial canal-isation of the river, this whole area was very wet. It's still pretty darned wet but no longer a swamp. It was even malarial, back in the day. The river itself sashayed over an area about 100m wide at one point. Sometimes it was in this channel, sometimes it was in that channel.

The Iron Age people used this boggy ground as a defense of their settlement on one side but they didn't live there. The Romans chose to build their settlement on top of a hill over a mile away. The Anglo-Saxons would have grazed cattle there, but they sure as hell built their farms well away, as in minimum half-mile away, according to the archaeology. Even the Normans, the new boys on the block, decided to give the river area a miss.

Only now, hungry property developers are circling the floodplain like vultures over a wildebeest carcase. It's flat! It's green! It's empty! We could build on it and charge premium rates for a river view!

If you're contemplating hocking your life's labour for a home, you need to do your own due diligence and spend some time studying local history and geology. A few hours in the library could save you a world of hurt later.

grandma247

We live near the top of a very long hill but have a reservoir above us about 5 minutes walk away. Hopefully it is well maintained.

thriftwizard

OH once spent a very wet & cold Christmas Eve fishing people out of their caravans & mobile homes at one of the holiday/residential parks downriver from here. It was quite a sudden "flood" & wouldn't even have been described as such if the park homes hadn't been there; the river never really got "out of bed" but the homes were situated inside the normal winter flood area. After a run of dry years, people had just forgotten that it isn't always that low. I hesitate to describe the victims as "lucky" but if it had happened the next day, when emergency services cover is much lower, there would have been fatalities; many of them were no longer as spry as they once were & one or two were disabled & simply couldn't run for it.

We too have developers eyeing up a flood plain; they've moved our cricket club onto it & put in a bit of drainage to keep the crease dry so it must be safe to build there now, eh? Trouble is, people from the city looking to move out to "the country" will have no idea that their beautiful executive des. res. with river & cricket ground view & triple garage is slap bang in the way of "the lake of Dorset" which is only there for about 2 weeks of each occasional wet winter, much like the "winterbournes" which only appear, quite often in the middle of roads, sometimes fountaining up 2 or 3 feet, when it's really, really wet.

pineapple

Am I the only one who scrubs her teeth like mad before a visit to the dental hygienist? :rotfl:Still - next week it's a root canal
On the issue of flooding I've been flooded once and it's not fun - not due to flood plains but the peculiar drainage issues for this property and the fact that the previous owners (Messrs Dodge it and Bodge it) carefully constructed the perfect water trap against the rear patio doors for water running down the steps from the upper garden. There again what else would you expect from the numpties who thought it was a good idea to fit a double electric socket behind the taps just above the kitchen sink? :eek:

RAS

GreyQueen wrote: »

For example, in my hometown, with its Iron Age origins, there are several rivers and streams which come together in the valley bottom. This is a barely-preceptable valley, by the standards of my part of southern England, not some proper valley which you might encounter in the West or North. It also has a fair few springs bubbling up there.

Until modern water management techniques and the regular dredging and partial canal-isation of the river, this whole area was very wet. It's still pretty darned wet but no longer a swamp. It was even malarial, back in the day. The river itself sashayed over an area about 100m wide at one point. Sometimes it was in this channel, sometimes it was in that channel.

The Iron Age people used this boggy ground as a defense of their settlement on one side but they didn't live there. The Romans chose to build their settlement on top of a hill over a mile away. The Anglo-Saxons would have grazed cattle there, but they sure as hell built their farms well away, as in minimum half-mile away, according to the archaeology. Even the Normans, the new boys on the block, decided to give the river area a miss.

One of the the more facinating slides presented at a talk showed the location of the medieval settlements in our local townships. A few smallish ones round major river crossings (three), one of which was the location of the chapel at ease and the other the fulling mill. Otherwise, spread round the local hillsides.

It was when he put in the location of the local springheads that the whole thing made sense. River sides were wet, malarial and the water quality was likely to be dodgy. It was easier to clear land and travel on the higher land and where there was safe reliable water supplies, people built houses.

short_bird

GQ and Mrs LW: Thanks, I was weeping with laughter at your post apocalyptic fables!

Butterfly_Brain

GreyQueen wrote: »

Thanks for that link, Hollyberry. I have that site bookmarked but hadn't seen that one yet.

Have also seen accounts of at least two other blogs of preppers who lost supplies due to disasters; a family man who was burned out of the home and suffered total loss, and a lady who had a flood in her basement where all her preps were stored................arrgghhhh!

When I wrack my brains, I can think of only one pal with a cellar and know of no family members who have them either, but they seem to be commonplace and a favoured storage place for our American cousins. If anyone can recall the original series of Survivors, where the rain overflows and goes down into the cellar of that stately home where they are storing their supplies?

I guess the lesson is to think about the potential for water ingress and also not to have all your eggs in one basket. I have a metal storage rack bolted to the back wall of my bike shed, but the lowest shelf is stuff which wouldn't take any particular harm from a soaking, whereas the tins and the bottled water are anything from 3-5 feet above ground level. The t.p. is on a separate high shelf above head-height.

Have had a pretastic day wrangling with blunt instruments on the lottie and have been to a few chazzers. I found a copy of Self Reliance by John Yeoman for 25p, plus several plastic funnels and another L0ck&L0ck container, the whole lot coming it at less than £2.

Funnels are great to aid the speedier refilling of water containers and in event of a sewer-down situation, I would designate one to the bathroom for piddling into a bottle (sorry if that's TMI but cat litter is OK for number two's but there'd be a lot more pee than poo and us ladies aren't anatomically suited to going into bottles).

Besides, the nitrogen in urine is a useful plant fertiliser, although male urine is reckoned superior to female urine.............Apparently, the life cycles of a lot of plants are dependant on mammal urine for their nutrients. Soooo, if anyone accuses you of taking the p*ss - take it as a compliment.

I was always told that ladies wee was a weed killer and men's wee a fertiliser