Preventing Flood Damage

If you have accumulated the furniture in your home over a period of time, then you may have forgotten how much all of it is worth. You probably don’t want to think about it, but if you had to replace all the furniture in your home because of a flood, then the cost could be astronomical. This is why it is important to ensure that you have adequate insurance from a reputable provider such as Legal & General's home contents insurance, so that if the worst does happen, you would be able to afford to replace it. Ideally, though, you would want to avoid this at all costs. While there is nothing you can do to completely protect your home against flooding, there are a number of steps you can take to reduce the risk of flood damage to your property.

Floodwater can get into your property through a variety of routes, such as around closed doorways, through airbricks and up through the ground floor, via the sewerage system and up through your ground floor toilets and plugholes, and through cable holes in external walls. Usually, flood warnings tend to come quite soon before the flooding begins, if you get any warning at all, so you will more than likely not have the time to buy and install flood products in the event of a flood warning. Therefore, if you want to protect your home, you will have to buy all the necessary products in advance.

You can keep water from coming in through doors and windows by purchasing purpose-built flood boards that can be installed on external doors and windows whenever flooding is expected. Also, raising the threshold of your external doors can be highly effective in keeping out shallow flooding. To prevent water getting in through air bricks, you can get specially designed covers that can be fitted easily over ventilation bricks in the event of a flood warning. More expensive types can be fitted permanently and will work automatically when there is a flood, without cutting off airflow at other times.In order to prevent waste water from flowing into your property during a flood, you can fit non-return valves to the water inlet and outlet pipes and drains.

Preventing water from coming up through the floorboards can be a little trickier, but it is by no means impossible. For example, you can seal the floors with tanking, raise damp-proof brick courses, or swap out your wooden floorboards for concrete flooring.

Even if you have flood-proofed your home to the hilt, it is still vital that you obtain adequate home contents insurance to give you some financial protection in the event of a burglary or a fire.