HOUSE MIGHT FLOOD - need tips and advice please!

[FlowerTomb]

I'm in France, loads of rain for the past few days and now the village is flooding with water getting closer and closer to our house. Canals and rivers have overflowed. We are 10 mins from the beach so all water is passing through here. Garage is starting to flood as there's a drain in there and water is coming up from it.

Things we've done:

• Put a wooden barrier at the front door (everyone in our area has these, they're the norm) and plastered it into place, although the plaster hasn't dried due to the rain.
• Put a large plastic sheet over the top of the barrier and secured it against the wall with cement blocks.
• Stuffed the area between the barrier and the front door with towels and sheets.
• Also stuffed sheets and towels along the floor on the inside of the front door in the house. Will do the same for any other doors.
• Moved important possessions upstairs.

What else can we do? Any and all tips welcome, we've just finished renovating (did everything ourselves) and I'll be damned if any water gets in.

I typed out and submitted two posts in response but they disappeared!

Firstly I’m sorry you were flooded a bit but glad it wasn’t worse and you sound like you have coped really well

A couple of other thoughts for recovery: If you have pets just be careful about any contamination in your garden. I knew lady who had two dogs they were very ill after spending time in a post flooded garden.

The other thought is around possible pump options for the future. You can get what are known as puddle pumps which work for low levels of water as the name suggests. The other option is sump pumps which require you to have a pit so much more tricky.

I know you’re not in the UK but if you try the National flood forum website they’ve got a really good section on preparing for flooding including property level resilience measures, and a link to the blue pages which has suppliers of things like replacements for sandbags. You can get long sausage shaped bags which are filled with nappy type filling which expand when they get wet. They can be stored more easily and are also lighter to get rid of. You might also want to consider things like passive airbrick covers which are a relatively low cost an easy way to prevent water ingress.

@Leftbutcameback Thank you for your post! Thankfully we don't have any pets or children, so no risk of that. We are definitely buying a pump - we have our eye on one that pumps from the bottom, so we can just pop that in a room.

Thanks for the rec of National flood forum website, I'll take a look. We should be fine now flood-wise until October/November, so plenty of time to get some things sorted :)