Now that a stink appears to be gathering over houses built on flood plains, if I remember correctly did'nt Pratscott have alot to do with overturning many of the objections to allow the building to take place. This must be all the valuable work he will still be able to do by staying in office.
Dave
Aren't the people who buy houses on flood plains just as guilty as the ones who build them, thus creating a market for it.
Maybe houses should be constructed knowing that the land will occasionally flood. One solution would be to build them on stilts.
Just a thought.
I do kind of like the 'house constructed on polystyrene raft' solution. Gets a bit wet, and it just floats up.
The answer to building on flood plains is trivially easy. Each house,or housing estate should be surrounded by a levee over which the access road runs, sufficiently high to prevent flooding.
Or build the houses on stilts, and use the under-house space for storage.
I think so entirely..a building regulation couple be brought into enforce this.
There are already such to cover other natural events, like storm force winds and so on, and fire...why not flood?
Yep, that really worked in New Orleans :-)
Nothing wrong with the 'town house' style with only the garage on the ground floor and all accommodation on 1st and 2nd. Except compliance with Part M of course.
Owain
There are various ways to do it. Another is to bank the soil so the houses run along the crest of the banks with the access roads along the troughs, and all gardens will be sloping. Another is to just have the ground floor as garage storage only. Another is to use a floodproof construction with pumping, and so on.
Theres no need to specify one way to address it, but there is very much the need to require that any house built on a flood plain must be designed to survive floods unharmed. That this isnt in place is somewhat scandalous, and frankly a bit stupid.
NT
I think that bricklaying is difficult enough without that. I had this mental image of a hod carrier walking around a site wearing stilts.
;-)
What information do you have that Prescot of any quasi Labour government minister has assented to the idea?
As it happens it was a fact in the Tory government in the catastrophy for the building industry that was Thatcherism and continued into the grey era. (And in the Vaucluse region of France around the same time.)
The Secretary of State for Wales over-ruled the wants of local councils in North Wales when builders developed the flood plain between Colwyn Bay and Rhyl. A couple of weeks after the flood, he quietly resigned. Nobody mentioned a dickie bird.
Why?
Because the insurance companies wanted to get away with fraud and larceny on a grand scale and the Tories wanted to secure their sinecures with them when they retired from office.
The floods moved the houses off their foundations and should have cost the insurance companies dearly. As it was they nearly sank. It was the era Lloyds went bump. There was a time that the malicious business practices of all those evil men nearly brought a return to the era of the 1930's
Like they do in Mississippi and Louisiana? Haven't you heard of Hurricane Bush?
There is no sensible reason to build on a flood plain. But who has allowed it in this government?
Do people really want to live in hilly areas? Rock may be fine for foundations, but there's a lot more digging for services
The 'sensible' reason is that it's cheaper. Should it be up to government? What about insurance companies and mortgage providers using their power?
Prescott should stick to what he has been taught, and that is how to serve Gin & Tonic on a boat.
Chris.
Misuse. ;-( Technically our house is built on the Mersey flood plain - though, assuming that the Mersey burst its banks just a hundred metres or so away from us, it would still need to flood a few square miles more than 2 metres deep before our ground floor got damp. Effectively we're on stilts. Other houses, built on land that has been flooded in the last 20 years past the level of their first loor windows, is not shown on the government's (liable to flood) map.
I wouldn't trust an insurance company to make a reasonable decision.
Make sure that the gas, water, and lekky all come in on coiled "feed through" connections then ;-)
The message from Ian Stirling contains these words:
How likely is it to settle back down on a flat spot?
My sister had a floating patio when they lived on Canvey Island 'cos their bit of town was below high tide.
The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:
The drawback with building on the floodplains in the first place is that they are then no longer available as dampers (lousy pun) on water levels. Build on one and the problem downstream may still be manageable. Build on several in a row and the poor buggers downstream get hit with floods out of the blue in a previously nonflooding location.
True - and you either need some sort of anchor system, or an outboard :)
Who knows what is meant by "flood plain" in this context?
I live 300 yards from a river. A flood bank was built 50 years ago, and if the river ever reached the top of it, most of South Derbyshire and the top corner of Leicestershire would be under water, as there's no flood bank on the opposite side of the river. My house has not been flooded since the bank was built. Yet we still feature on some crude flood map, and get ludicrously alarmist letters from some Government agency or other. Our neighbour has been refused pp for some garden development because he didn't submit a "flood risk assessment". If he has this done, and it shows no significant risk despite what the damnfool map shows, and he gets permission, will this go down as "development in a flood plain" for shallow-thinkers to get all excited about?
Perhaps a steerable outlet on the S*n*f*o ...
Owain
|Aren't the people who buy houses on flood plains just as guilty as the |ones who build them, thus creating a market for it. | |Maybe houses should be constructed knowing that the land will |occasionally flood. One solution would be to build them on stilts. | |Just a thought.
Alternately new developments quite often have houses with a ground floor which is mainly garage.
|Rob wrote: |> Aren't the people who buy houses on flood plains just as guilty as the |> ones who build them, thus creating a market for it. |> |> Maybe houses should be constructed knowing that the land will |> occasionally flood. One solution would be to build them on stilts. | |I do kind of like the 'house constructed on polystyrene raft' solution. |Gets a bit wet, and it just floats up.
Our lightweight concrete. Seen some of those *on* a river in ?Holland? Very impressive.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.