FOCUS
Resilience and repair
With one sixth of British homes potentially at risk from flooding, Peter White explains the issues that BRE’s Flood Resilient Repair demonstration project set out to address
O
NE IN every six homes in Britain is now potentially at risk from fl ooding. And yet, as reported in the July/August FRM (on
page 38), Dr Stephen Garvin, director of BRE’s Centre for Resilience, said at the RISCAuthority Seminar that ‘there is nothing in the Building Regulations about fl ood resilience or property within fl ood risk areas. The technologies are out there and the industry has grown up, but it is still not pushed as a subject’. To help address this, in February 2017 the fl ood
resilient repair home was offi cially opened on the BRE Innovation Park at BRE’s Watford site. The home has been adapted with various products available on the market to make it resistant to fl ooding from water up to 600mm (2ft) deep above the door sill, and also resilient to the effects of being fl ooded beyond that – in other words, it is designed to dry out quickly and be suitable to move back into a very short time after a fl ood incident. At present, following a fl ood, builders strip off soggy plasterboard, take out the fl ooring and rip out saturated chipboard kitchen units. But once the house has dried out (often weeks or months later), they likely put gypsum plasterboard back in, install a replacement chipboard kitchen, and
use non water resistant fl ooring and insulation materials, which – if the home were to fl ood again in the future – will suffer the same fate. This is largely driven by current insurance industry practice, where reinstatement works require a like for like replacement.
Addressing fl ood types
The home demonstrates the use of alternative, fl ood resilient replacement products in repairs that will not be affected by subsequent fl ooding. It also shows how simple measures can help minimise future damage. If fl ood water does get in, systems such as an automatic ‘sump pump’ connected to drains in the floor can quickly get water out again, signifi cantly reducing time needed to get the building back in use. Crucially, although the demonstration home
is filled with technologies for resistance and resilience, it still looks and feels ‘normal’ – it is still homely. The fabric of a home can be affected by three basic types of fl ooding: •
water percolating up into the dwelling through the fl oor, owing to rising groundwater levels following periods of
20 DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018
www.frmjournal.com
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