Businesses and residents who are homeowners or tenants in private-rented housing are responsible for taking appropriate measures to prevent or reduce the impact of flooding on their property. This is especially important if you live in a property or area that is known to flood. Using Property Flood Resilience (PFR) equipment is a great way of protecting your home or business from flood water. There are two elements to PFR.
- Resistance measures involve implementing physical barriers such as flood doors or flood boards onto the outside of your property, to prevent water from entering.
- Resilience measures entail installing internal equipment such as hard, waterproof floors and raised electrical sockets, which reduce the impact of flood water and make it easier and quicker to recover from the damage caused.
It is preferable to prevent water from entering your property, so resistance measures are the most effective.
Information on finding suitable measures for your home is available at thefloodhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Property-Flood-Resilience-PFR-booklet.pdf
There are many permanent products and solutions available that you can use around your property to prevent damage from flood water. Visit the British Standards Institute for accredited products and the Blue Pages for an independent directory of products, suppliers and installers.
When choosing products, suppliers and installers, it is useful to ask yourself some of these questions to make sure they are reliable:
- Are the products Kitemarked?
- Do the products carry ongoing guarantees?
- Have the products been rigorously tested in real life situations?
- Do the products have a reliability track record?
- Is the proposed installer accredited through a recognised industry scheme (for example, BPEC)?
- Can they provide official photo ID and verification phone numbers?
- Do they hold necessary liability insurances to work on your home?
- Do they provide easy to understand ‘Deployment Instructions’?
- Do they offer a maintenance or customer service package?
- Can they provide testimonials or recommendations from existing customers?
Remember, the suitability and effectiveness of products will vary from home to home. Make sure you have thought about all your flood risks or seek professional advice before investing in expensive products – suppliers will be able to help you with this.
To ensure that PFR equipment fulfils its purpose, it is very important that it is checked regularly and maintained. If you have equipment installed, it is advised that you practice setting it up, so that it can be easily deployed in the event of a flood. Information on maintaining your PFR equipment is available here: PFR Health Check (double sided) (thefloodhub.co.uk).This is also a useful to checklist to go through Flood Resilience checklist (thefloodhub.co.uk).
If you move into a new home where there is existing PFR equipment, please make sure it is still in good condition and functioning properly. Similarly, if you move house and leave PFR measures behind, please ensure that the new owners are made aware of it and how to deploy it.
If you have previously been flooded, funding might be available from your insurer as part of the Build Back Better scheme, where you can receive financial support to make your home more resilient to future flooding during the recovery process. Build Back Better – Flood Re
In addition to adding (semi)-permanent PFR measures to your home or business, there are some temporary measures that can also be employed. In some parts of Somerset, your former district council may well have supplied sandbags. Sandbags can be one of the tools used to prevent flood damage by diverting water away from your property and empty bags and sand are readily available from builders’ merchants and DIY stores. However, sandbags are not the most effective PFR method and, consequently, are no longer supplied by Somerset Council. You can read more this and other advice and guidance on how to prepare for flooding on the Somerset Council website.
If you are planning to purchase sandbags, gel flood bags, hydro snakes or other temporary PFR measures, please contact Rotary EVAG (a registered charity consisting of Rotary and Inner Wheel volunteers and a Somerset Prepared partner) which has well established activity and experience in household flood resilience guidance. They attend multiple properties each year and have resilience product kits available for use in households.
Contact:
David Welch – david303welch@btinternet.com