Floods?

[harryagain]

I see they are forecasting local floods/thunder storms now. Everyone prepared? Should we all be floodproofing our houses?

[Brian Gaff]

Unless you live on a hill yes, but who gets the floods is really down to almost random chance though the state of drains and nearby hills and whether you get a storm is going to be a contributing factor. Brian

[Steve Firth]

Out on the downs there are several villages that will only flood if it is raining miles away, days after the storm. It takes that long for the springs in the villages to start to gush water as the rain percolates through the chalk aquifer.

Tewkesbury and Upton on Severn also flood When it rains elsewhere - up around Shrewsbury I think.

[Mentalguy2k8]

Last "proper" flood I remember being involved in must have been in the mid to late 70s, we spent a panicky hour looking for the drowned body of our pet tortoise, we found him at the front of the house standing upright and still on his back legs with his front legs up the wall and his mouth out of the water, clever bastard.

[Dave Liquorice]

If we get flooded the rest of you are going to be in a very bad way.

[David.WE.Roberts]

Even living on a hill doesn't always save you.

In 2007 (IIRC) there were terrific storms along the Kennet valley around Newbury and Thatcham.

We were well up a hill (the people in the road at the bottom were flooded out) but the people up hill from us were also flooded.

There was a picture in the papers of our next door neighbour on the main road outside the estate with water up to her door handles.

The water just came down the hill side and followed the easiest route which was onto the A4 then through the houses down hill and down the main ways to the river and canal at the bottom.

So you need to be up a hill and not on a flood route as well.

Cheers

Dave R

[Artic]

harryagain scribbled...

Take a look at where the water might come from and check it has free flow. No blocked drains, streams etc. Has some f****it dumped a load of rubbish off the road into a gulley.

It pays to do this regularly, you can't rely on the council or landowners to maintain water courses nowadays.

[Scott M]

Are you later going to post a follow up to say you've built an ark?

[Nightjar]

Mine is already prepared, not that I expect much problem from thunderstorms. It takes weeks of solid rain before I start getting the flood boards out.

Lightning strikes on solar panels, now that would worry me, if I had any.

Colin Bignell

[Mentalguy2k8]

I've just seen someone who reckons that Brentford got hit by a big storm earlier and some of it is flooded, but nothing online yet.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Mentalguy2k8 writes

He would have been even cleverer if he'd 'turned turtle'!

[Jim K]

hopefully not from MDF...

Jim K

[PeterC]

Even that won't save you from an unnatural flood route. Apparently storm water would gush down the drains at the top of Malvern and come up/stop drainage in the streets lower down. It was solved by putting in, er, swirly drains to slow down the water.

[Steve Firth]

PeterC wrote: [snip]

Not really "solved" it still happens but the rainstorm needs to be a big one.

Also as previously posted patterns of flooding in some areas like the South Downs are odd. You can get flooding at the top of a hill if there's another hill that is higher and has (a lot of) rain falling on it.

[The Other Mike]

Hills are not immune to flooding.

[harryagain]

No but I ahave built a substantial garden wall to keep floodwater out of the garden. (We are on a hillside but I have seen a lot of water come down our road.) The valley bottoms round here really catch it on occasion.

[charles]

indeed not, after 40 days and 40 nights all the was left above the waters was the top of Mount Ararat

[polygonum]

If my location ever floods it will be goodbye to an awful lot of property. House is at around 180 metres ASL, with approx. 1:10 slopes to the east and west to around 80 metres ASL, almost no slope to the north, slight downhill, rapidly becoming steep, to the south. Not only that, but the nature of the hill itself is mostly very porous except for some areas with a few inches/foot or two of clay.

We could get a very soggy garden if rain constituted for a very long time. Or if a major water main burst along the nearby main road. That is about all the is ever realistically going to happen.

[Dave Liquorice]

Same here.

421 m ASL (1400')

The land falls away NE, through S, to NW, varies from gentle to steep. North is up hill about the same as the gentle NE/NW directions. The steep bits fall away about 130 m (420') vertically to river in the valley bottom that is only about 500 m (1640', 1/3 mile) away hrizontally.

All our doors are at least 6" above the adjacent surface which generally falls away from the house anyway. There would have to be an

*AWFUL* lot of water coming down from the north to get in, it doesn't hang about on hills like we have. B-)

It doesn't hang about in the river either, that is rather "flashy" in nature. If there is a decent heavy rain fall over the catchment the level will rise a metre or more in just a few tens of minutes. At 1 m above normal it will still be in it's channel though, I don't think it floods until over 2 m.

[Dave Liquorice]

That I will agree with. They seem to have some funny rules. They sent a gully clearing truck around here recently they did the ones along the B road but have they done C roads nope...

Quite a few landowners would love to maintain the watercourses on their properties, a flooded field doesn't grow crops be that grass for livestock or carrots. Trouble there is an awful lot of red tape thrown up by the EA, Natural England an other "interested partys".