Property Flood Resilience Works

Property Flood Resilience Works

A single building incorporating a ground floor and a first floor apartment in the Rochford area of Essex. There is a water course approximately 12m behind the property.

Existing flood defenses included the following:

Aluminium channels were installed to the front door of the GF unit, the front door of the 1^st floor unit and the rear door and side light window of the gf unit. The channels were in poor condition and at the rear had been installed covering 2 airbricks. ACO drains had been added in front of both front doors although they had not been connected to the drainage system.

The silicone seals around the barriers were damaged and/or missing. Timber had been used to pack-out the rear door channel. No fixing bolts were on site. The aluminium barriers themselves were not on-site at the property, rendering the defenses entirely useless.

There were no non return valves fitted to the drainage system, and there were no toilet stop devices on-site at either property.

Airbrick flood covers had been fitted. These were in very poor condition and not operational in terms of flood defense. Furthermore, they clearly provided insufficient free area to ventilate the sub-floor, a situation made much worse by the fact that they hadn’t been cleaned or maintained.

Three out of 4 service meter boxes had been installed poorly and required sealing with high grade water repellent mastic finished with silicone.

In summary, the existing property flood resilience measures were not sufficient to provide any protection to the property. Even if the materials required to be stored on site had been available, they would undoubtedly have failed. In the event of a flood, contaminated flood water would rise up through the ground floor, as well as pouring from the ground floor toilets. If the waters had continued to rise, water would have entered via the front and rear doors and windows.

Tandem supplied and fitted:

• 2 x kitemarked PVC flood Doors to the front elevation, Including removal of old aluminium channel, sealing if fixing holes, concreting of threshold where channel was removed, finishing.
• One large rear door and side panel to rear elevation of 43A. Including removal of old aluminium channel, sealing if fixing holes, Removal of timber packing, finishing.

• Installation of anti-flood non return valves to drains

• Replacement of existing standard airbricks and covers with kitemarked anti-flood airbricks. It should be noted that the airbricks are installed in the traditional manner using mortar. Once available the airbricks will be re-installed using the push sleeve system. Both methods offer full protection. Each airbrick incorporates a QR code which when scanned records the installation date and subsequently records service/inspection dates. Ensuring compliance with the maintenance requirements relating to the kitemark and Environment Agency approvals as well as compliance (in terms of sub-floor ventilation), with Awaab’s Law.
• Sealing of holes and damage around service penetrations, all holes and visible defects.