I saw this picture of a woman’s home in Britain protected by a floodgate. She looks calm and so is the dog. I guess her house is dry?
News article. Britain is really get hit hard.
Why isn’t this available in the US? There are a lot of homes that get flooded and damaged every year. Even 6 inches of water in a home will cost thousands in damage.
That will keep a sudden wash of water from flowing in, but it’ll be useless against water pouring in through any holes or cracks in the structure. Houses (at least in the US) aren’t built watertight like boats - they shed water from above just fine by virtue of the various layers and components being overlapped, but can’t survive being immersed.
My house, for example, is built with light plywood sheathing on 2x4 studs, and covered with vinyl lap siding. There are so many holes through the wall for things like phone lines, gas pipes, sill cocks (hose spigots) dryer vents, etc, that I’d do just as well standing in the middle of the yard, and hoping the flood scoots around me and the house as if I was Moses.
A few reasons.
The majority of houses in North America (US and Canada) are made of frame, not masonry. (Most new “brick” houses just have what’s called face brick; the underlying structure is still wood frame.) They’re water resistant, but not completely watertight.
Basements are far more common in the US. Even if water doesn’t get inside the house, it may still seep into the basement, depending on soils.
Entry doors are usually a few inches or feet above ground level. Entry doors that are level with the ground are uncommon; usually only encountered in parts of the US where houses are built on slabs (Florida, Texas, Southwestern states).
In places where it actually floods regularly, houses are built on stilts or with a concrete/cinderblock lower floor that can be shoveled and hosed out.
A follow up: in the US, you have the right to build on a legally platted lot, within the confines of zoning laws. Many old lots are in floodplains, and can still be built on. However, most communities prohibit the creation of new residential building lots in FEMA-mapped flood zones. Thus, outside of places where almost all the land is in a flood zone (Louisiana, etc), houses on lots created after a certain date will face very little risk of flood damage.
For houses in flood-prone areas, mortgage holders require flood insurance, which can be very costly. There’s not much incentive to build floodproof houses when insurance will cover the costs of damage.
Yes, that house in the picture is probably an old (100 to 200 years old) solid brick or rock structure. based on location, it’s probably been through a lot of these floods and all the existing cracks and holes have been blocked. I bet it doesn’t have outdoor electrical outlets for yardwork, the electrical wiring or plumbing does was not installed by drilling through the brick. I suspect it is not as hi-tech, the wiring, heating, etc. were minimal afterthoughts like many very old buildings.
Some houses in the USA may be in flood-prone areas, but I doubt any are susceptible to regular flooding like this. It looks like this is a typical occurence - every few years - and the precautions have been made to weather it.
I once drove from Fargo to Winnipeg, and many of the houses there along the Red River flood area were behind ring dikes, or (re)built on raised earth platforms. OTOH, the flooding as Occurred in Calgary last summer were totally unexpected, and the whole downtown flooded in a way never seen before.
Modern wood-frame and gyprock are ot desigened to tolerate flooding, and certainly almost no North American construction is designed to make a house into a dry spot in the middle of a lake.
Plus, this IIRC from the news is a high tide. A lot of the destructive flood in N. America are raging river overflows, hurricane surges, and the like. It’s not so much the height of the water as the force and speed, and being pounded with floating debris, that’s the problem.
the lady in the picture would have a different look on her face if there were 3-foot high waves…
I wondered if the water could get through the walls. I guess if its sealed masonry it would be pretty watertight.
In many British coastal towns, it’s common to see a slot on door frames that is designed to take a shutter or floodgate such as that one, on the houses that are subject to occasional flood risk - but in the main, this is to cope with tidal flood conditions - i.e. a large spring tide, combined with onshore winds and following heavy rainfall - all conspiring to create a super high tide that comes a foot or two up the walls of the houses nearest the shore.
But when the tide falls - a few hours later, it can be expected to drain away.
For example, in Bosham, West Sussex, the tide comes right up to the houses - take a look at this series of Google Streetviews:
In this one, the tide is in - the road disappears into the water
(click to move the view forward (past the man) and it switches to a view that was captured when the tide was out - see there’s a car park and seafront road there (there are signs warning people not to park when the tide is coming in, but visitors often get it wrong and return to find their vehicles half under the water).
Many of the houses have walls encircling them, with steps that go over, such as here.
Others have gates with raised sills - the ones shown herehave a concrete barrier about a foot tall, but you can also see thin battens fixed to the gate posts, into which a larger temporary plywood shutter can be dropped when a higher tide or surge is expected.
And on thishouse (opposite the previous view), if you ignore the horrible stitching artifacts in the Google imagery, you can see timber rails either side of the bottom of the door, designed to hold a temporary floodgate in place.
This works because the houses are very solidly built, and have been made waterproof around their whole perimeter, and because any flooding they expect to experience is only temporary.
After some tremendous (100+ year) floods from creeks in the towns northeast of Sacramento, many homes were rebuilt on elevated foundations and utility first floors.