Flood Damage – Dealing With The Aftermath With Damp Proofing Products

Flood Damage –

How Damp Proofing Products Can Help

There is another season to add to the calendar in the United Kingdom. The flood season is upon us and this year it is worse than ever. Traditionally November is the month which sees the most days of rain and this year it has seen torrential downpours on a scale which has not only fully saturated the ground but overwhelmed flood defences and caused flood damage to thousands of homes and offices throughout the country. Experts are telling us that the extended rainfall may be a direct result of global warming but the harsh reality is we are living with the real risk of flood damage to properties global warming or not.

Proactive flood defence strategy is now being called on to protect vulnerable towns and cities throughout the UK. Various damp proofing products and systems are available to local councils to protect structures from flood damage and in the last few weeks the towns which have implemented flood defence have benefited by giving emergency services time to evacuate townships prior to the floods arriving. Unprecedented amounts of rainfall may have overwhelmed major flood defence systems but some properties have been able to weather the effects of flood by installing flood defence measures to properties themselves. Technology has moved on from the basic sandbags across the door threshold to items such as flood gates across the door and windows, tailor made caps for air bricks and even external sump pump stations to capture the water prior to coming against the property.

Many properties that have suffered from flood damage previously are now installing basement waterproofing techniques such as the Newton System 500 above the ground to combat the risk of flooding.

Membranes with dimples are fixed to the structure internally creating what is usually a 8mm air gap behind. This simple approach means that if you property has been flood damaged before then your saturated walls can dry out behind the membrane and allow for a permanent finish to be applied (plasterboard or render) usually the same day getting people back into their homes quicker. This is a good alternative to blasting the property with blow heaters and putting dehumidifiers in every room because flood damaged walls will be drying out over a period of years not weeks and inevitably if you try and paint or replaster any contaminates in the damp walls, salts will come through and you will have a recurring and annoying problem. The internal membrane installation approach should also take into consideration the ability to remove any water that is to come near the structure. Usually this would involve placing a basedrain gutter internally into the wall/floor junction to channel the water to a sump and pump. This technique can be seen in a flood mitigation case study on the John Newton and Company website. http://www.newton-membranes.co.uk/content/PDFs/Case%20Study_FloodMitigationOxfordshire_Aug09.pdf