Home-in-tank helps fight floods (From Herald Series)

Home-in-tank helps fight floods

8:19pm Tuesday 2nd February 2010

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Flood experts have built a mock-up living room in a water tank to help them develop new ways to protect homes.

The tank, at HR Wallingford, in Howbery Park, throws waves of water against the room, to test which products are best at protecting houses against rising water.

It is the only facility of its kind in Britain and is expected to cut the cost of developing simple household defences.

The Environment Agency, which is backing the project, hopes the facility will lead to more equipment being developed to help householders prevent a repeat of the devastating July 2007 floods, which damaged hundreds of homes in Oxford, Abingdon and west Oxfordshire.

The agency’s director of flooding, Robert Runcie, said: “One-sixth of properties are at risk of some form of flooding. If you get six inches of water in your house, it will mean tens of thousands of pounds of damage.”

“In the Cumbria floods last year, 46 homes in the town of Appleby didn’t flood, because they had defences.

“The cost of that was about £2,000 a house, but the damage flooding could have done could have been £20,000 or £30,000."

Peter Collins, a flood risk expert working for the agency, said: “In Oxfordshire, 45,000 homes are at risk of flooding. If a householder knows what to do themselves, it might just save them from the next flood.

“People round here need no reminder on what damage flooding can do."

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