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This rain

(64 Posts)
FlicketyB Wed 29-Jan-14 16:49:26

We have been told that we have to stay with our current insurer because no other company will give us flood cover. Like you merlot our house has never flooded, but that line on the map is just too close to the house. I gather we have to be 100+ feet or metres away to break free of that problem.

Mind you my sister was refused flood cover because she was within 30 yards or similar of a river. She pointed out that the river ran in a steep valley and her house was over 30 feet above it and did in the end get an insurance company to see sense

merlotgran Wed 29-Jan-14 16:13:55

We are on the Cambridgeshire Fens which is below sea level but efficiently drained. I have never seen the fields so waterlogged and the farm road is full of really deep potholes. Thank goodness for a 4x4 and the fact that the road is not our responsibility.

The excess for flooding on our insurance is £1000 because our postcode shows that we are between two rivers. They won't believe that our land has never flooded, not even in 1947 and 1953.

FlicketyB Wed 29-Jan-14 16:01:16

According to the Environment Agency the furthest edge of the ground water flooding area lies just the other side of our access road, about 40 foot from our front door. The road the other side of the ditch of the access road is in the flood zone. However the ground rises gently and we are about 18 inches above the ground water flooding and 2 or 3 feet above the road.

Some of the newer parts of the village are very firmly in the flood plain and in the 2007 summer freak inundation that nearly did for Tewkesbury 50 or 60 houses in our village were flooded. We didn't flood, we are in an old house in the old centre of the village like Tegan

Our part of the Vale of White Horse is an active flood plain and most of the fields around the village are not flooded, but contain huge puddles a hundred feet or more long and tens of feet wide, as does the village green. Some of them have been there for since before Christmas and are getting bigger.

Tegan Wed 29-Jan-14 15:19:34

Same here. Although my house is new'ish it was built in the older part of the village where they knew the best pace to build [hope I'm not tempting fate saying this]. Even when one of the lanes down the road floods, the actual farmhouse doesn't because, again, it was built in the right place. Past generations knew what they were doing. If an old house does flood it's often because someone somewhere has tampered with something [we now get all the flood water from Burton since they built their flood defences a few years ago]. I must check my insurance cover though hmm.

kittylester Wed 29-Jan-14 15:04:26

We can tell how bad the floods are around us without having to get out of bed. If there is a lot of traffic going past our house first thing in the morning it usually means that most roads out of the our bit of the Soar Valley are impassable. Our road only has localised flooding caused by run-off from the fields.

I feel so sorry for people who are suffering from flooding. Not only have they that to contend with but, presumably, their houses will be greatly devalued should they try to sell them.

I've told the story before about trying to get house insurance only to be told that we are too close to the river and therefore liable to flood. Although, as the crow-flies, we are fairly close, the river is in a valley and we are at one of the higher points of the village. Despite my arguing the point the girl on the phone was adamant. In frustration, I said that if our house flooded then Noah would have to set about building his ark again. After a moment's silence the girl asked 'Who?' confused

harrigran Wed 29-Jan-14 13:26:42

Where DS lives in county Durham the water is running down the main road all the time. Where water drains off the fields the drains can't cope. Bitterly cold and damp here today, the kind of weather that makes your bones ache.

Atqui Wed 29-Jan-14 13:22:59

I am visiting daughter in West Sussex where it has been pouring with rain all morning. rang husband in Devon only to discover they have a lovely day down there;it's usually the other way round!!

Gagagran Wed 29-Jan-14 12:51:25

We had a trip out for lunch into the West Sussex South Downs National Park yesterday and everything is sodden and dripping. The lanes and roads are filthy and full of puddles, the verges are muddy and very wet and the fields are simply oozing and leaking water like an overfull sponge. Will it ever dry out?

Having said that there are catkins everywhere and bulbs standing proudly showing their buds and the light has changed and is much clearer and brighter. Spring is lurking but I wish it would get a move on!

janerowena Wed 29-Jan-14 11:54:58

I used to live near Yalding, it flooded most years and I got used to it, we bought a high 4-wheel drive to cope. My daughter moved back to Kent, to Maidstone, her house flooded a couple of weeks ago and she has just had a new front door with extra strong seals installed and new fencing around her garden, as it all came down. The rainfall isn't high in Kent, it's the solid clay that is the problem I think, all the water just washes over it. I lived in various parts of it for 45 years and flooding was a problem in most areas, unless you lived high up on the Downs. I lived in Chainhurst for a while and we were marooned for a week one new year, all roads were impassable.

A farmer friend told me that the problem is people filling in their drainage ditches to gain more garden/field space. All you need is one person in the chain filling in the ditches, or not bothering to clear them, and everyone gets flooded. I have watched the same thing happening here in Suffolk, we live at the edge of a watermeadow. A neighbour's garden is edged by a ditch and he has spent years disposing of his horse bedding into it, much to my horror. The estate owners adjoining us have spent the past week digging out the ditches and dumping it all right back on his land. I was very relieved.

tanith Wed 29-Jan-14 11:48:19

Nothing on the scale others have here but our local park and fields surrounding are flooded so that large expanses of water are showing all the time , its not getting a chance to drain away before the next deluge. I've never seen it like this for more than a couple of days in Winter before and its now been like it for over a month and there is water running along footpaths. I'm on the fringes of Ealing .

Nelliemoser Wed 29-Jan-14 11:38:07

Cheshire escapes a lot of rain as the worst of it tends to fall over the Welsh mountains. It also helps that I live in an area with a lot of quick draining sands and gravels.

Mishap Wed 29-Jan-14 11:31:07

Same here - the rain and floods are incessant. And my OH spends his whole time looking at the weather forecast and giving me a running commentary on it. I have stopped listening - it is like the radiators humming - just background noise. What will be, will be.

newist Wed 29-Jan-14 11:27:10

Its rained most days for over 2 months in the Hebrides, locals tell me this is the worst they can remember. I have drains in my garden and a drainage ditch, our house is built on peat as are a lot of others. The whole island is basically a bog, the good thing is even though all of our grass is saturated it does slowly drain away. Our indoor cats use sand for their litter tray, we have a peat fire, it has been very difficult this year keeping the sand and peat dry.

Brendawymms Wed 29-Jan-14 11:10:02

I live at the top of the Weald of Kent on Sandstone. We have land drains across the garden due to natural springs. This year however they are not coping and the flower beds are lakes, the drive a river and the grass ripples water when walked on. My daughter in Paddock Wood , it's near Yalding, has roads blocked by flooding all around her. How are others being affected?