Flood Resilient House

During the summer months, many of us turn to garden projects and to home improvement DIY jobs that we’ve been putting off – or been unable to complete because of lockdown. If you are thinking about making changes to your home, do have a think about what materials you could use that would work well if your home ever flooded.

There are many products, or things we can do to make our home more “resilient” – or easier to recover – if we were flooded. So, in the same way as when starting a home improvement project you’d think about energy efficient products and ways to keep your house warm, think about what you could do to make it more flood resilient.

Why? Over the coming years, flooding is projected to get worse across Scotland due to climate change so making our properties flood resilient is going to become even more important. One of the ways flooding is likely to get worse is from intense heavy rain causing surface water flooding when the rainwater can’t sink into the ground or into drains quickly enough. This kind of flooding is really difficult to predict exactly where it will happen, and, although usually shallow, it can happen quickly and damage your home. Measures to stop shallow water getting into a house (things like airbrick covers and door guards) can be really effective in this situation.

In areas where other kinds of flooding (from rivers and the sea) are likely, then other measures can be help – like thinking about rugs that can be lifted when flooding is forecast or floors and plasterboard that dry out and can be easily cleaned. Or kitchen cabinets made of water resistant materials. These are bigger things to do, and that is why it is useful to have them in your mind when you are doing maintenance or making improvements to your home for other reasons.

The picture above gives you some indication of the sort of things you could think about, and new guidance is being produced to give you, or your builder more advice on what to consider. The initial guidance framework can be found here and more detail will be available later in the year and the Living with Flooding Action Plan give an overview of other work going on to raise the awareness of Property Flood Resilience.

Even if you are not considering changes to your home, there are some simple things you can do in order to be prepared – including creating an emergency flood kit or checking that your property flood protection equipment is working.

Our website also gives advice on ways to stop water getting into your home through property flood protection measures, and in the coming months will have more information and links about resilience measures too. Do get in touch if you’d like to know more.