What you should do to adapt your home
Adaptation means taking action to prepare for and adjust to the possible impact of a flood. Depending on how likely you are to suffer a flood (and how big it would be), you should think about installing some adaptation measures to your house.
Adaptation packages
Once you run your analysis on Inond’Act, you will see some suggestions, named Adaptation packages. As you can notice they are incremental, ranging from basic, medium, advanced to pro. Indeed, each package is adapted to increasing levels of risk. Inond’Act will then suggest what is the most cost-effective for your building. If you already ran the model and know what package we suggest, you will find the necessary explanations to implement it below.
Adaptation BASIC
Resisting a flood is the best strategy in case of minor floods. This package will increase the impermeability of your walls and your openings (doors, window bays).
Adaptation BASIC includes:
- A water pump: used to remove the water out of your basement or ground floor.
- Cofferdams (batardeaux in French): these are 80 to 110 cm barriers that you can put on your doors and window bays to prevent water entering your house.
- Impermeability of walls: covering ventilation holes and eventual little cracks on your walls is fundamental to improve the impermeability of your building.
- Non-return valves (clapets anti-retour): in case of big floods, the municipal sewage systems could be saturated with water. This can cause water to flow out from your sanitaries. If non-return valves are applied to your plumbing system, water will only flow one way: from your pipes to the sewages, and not the other way around.
Adaptation Medium
If the flood is higher than one meter, letting the water enter your house is the best strategy, as its prolonged pressure on walls could cause structural damage. This package is adapted for both “resisting” and “surrendering” strategies, depending on the severity of the flood.
It includes all the previous measures plus:
- Elevating plugs and other electrical installations up the wall
- Elevating the heating system (and boiler) at the first floor or, if located in the basement, at the ground flood.
Advanced Adaptation
This package is meant to adapt to medium floods and prevent major damages to your house.
It adds to the other packages.:
- Elevating electrical radiators
- Creating a downstream power network, or two separate electricity networks: the first option involves installing a system in which electrical power flows downwards. This means that the central panel is placed at the top of the building and the electrical system is never completely damaged by water. The second one separates the network in two: one part exposed to water and the other one in a safe area (ex. first floor).
- Changing floorings at the ground floor and in the basement: the suggested material is porcelain stoneware. It is more resistant to water and it can prevent damages to lower layers of the pavement (screed, insulation, etc.)
Adaptation Pro
This package prepares you to live with the risk. For this reason, it involves several adaptation measures and can be much more expensive than the others.
It includes, other than what was already mentioned:
- Raising the windows
- Installing impermeable doors and windows
- Impermeable or removable partition walls
- Impermeable wall coating
All of these measures are supposed to decrease the time and cost of cleaning, the amount of damages and rapidly allowing access to the house again.
Our adaptation packages are meant to provide you with the best strategy to protect your house. However, you should also consider other measures that are not taken into account by Inond’Act: such as having water-resistant furniture, raising your appliances (oven, washing machine, etc.), secure your valuable objects and take to higher ground toxic products that could pollute the water. Anchoring objects that can float and cause damages in the house is very important as well, as they could break windows and other fragile things.
In order to facilitate rescue operations, you should always signal ditches, low areas and pools in your property. Finally, if you are extremely exposed to flood, you should set up a safe area on top of your building.