We’ve lived in our house for some years. We were flooded in 2000 and again in 2003 and subsequently over that time we’ve learnt how to adapt our house so that we are less troubled by the flooding. The house doesn’t get damaged. We don’t need to make insurance claims. We don’t need to move out and we don’t throw anything away. When we were flooded in 2000, we replaced the wooden floor and but when we flooded again in 2003 and the floor buckled for the second time, we decided to go for stone.
And that’s what you can now be seen throughout the ground floor of our house. And we’re quite lucky because this floor slopes down a bit in this direction. And so any water coming in around the sides of the walls is which is what it does, goes down through this hole here and this little metal grid. And underneath here is a sump which pumps the water straight outside. This room was flooded yesterday. By the time we woke up, the water is gone.
But we thought we’d show you a sort of a simulated flood using this hosepipe to show you what happens when the flood water runs across the floor. Most people probably wouldn’t do this in their kitchen water with a hose pipe. So you will see that the water will run across towards the grid that now we’re quite happy to do this. There it goes. Can you hear it now? It’s going down the hole. We can spread it around the floor.
We’re not worried because it won’t do any harm at all. And as it just fills up a bit will get down that thing emerging into the garden outside. The plinths which are over there have been removed. We always take those off before the flood and they get clipped back on very easily afterwards. The units are on plastic legs, which is standard for kitchen units, so they don’t get damaged accompanying the electrical circuits like a raised up. And as you can see in the fridge here, the dishwasher on the other side, they’re all up off the ground skirting board.
It’s just off the floor deliberately. There’s a gap. As you can see, I can run my penlight blade under there that says any water that comes in can flow easily into the room and down the drain, so to speak. The skirting board itself is painted all round the back and underneath with a couple of glass paint before it went on. And as you can see, this has been flooded a month ago and again just yesterday. And it’s completely unscathed.
There’s no warping. It’s not coming away from the wall. And then it went to the plaster here. Looks damp. It is then. But the interesting thing is it’s not the paint is barely flaking. This is an old fashioned piece of lime plaster, which is what this house would have been plastered with originally. It allows water to move up through it in the breeze and dries out naturally.
Not everything in this system is high tech or expensive. A very important part of the system is the yogurt pots or old margarine containers. The legs of furniture are stored in these and that protects them from the dampness on the floor because the water is flowing at night just in case we would move. And if you move up onto the sofa, this is how we sandbag our back door. It’s an important part of cleaning up after a flood.
We’ve done it like this so the cats can use the cat flap at the back here you’ve got a piece of plastic that’s up against the door which runs forward and the sandbags. This is full of sandbags on the here, pressed hard up against the plastic. That’s better than just using sandbags alone because you’ve got a plastic membrane there that forms the final barrier to the water. Although flooding is a disaster and we absolutely understand how people who are being flooded at the moment will have been recently feel.
It’s desperate if you’re insured. It’s more difficult if you’re not that if you’re insured, ask your insurers if you can put the money not to replacing like for like but use the same money to do things differently. You will find that future flooding is a lot less stressful. Things are back to normal quickly, and you don’t have all the worries that you have before those get outside your house and everything carries on as normal. But I’m ready.
If your house is not flood proof and need help getting rid of water damage, don’t hesitate to contact Speedy Palm Desert Water Damage Restoration, and we’ll help you address any problems with water damage caused by flooding.