Home birth, birthing pool, top floor flat

[weeonion]

evening folks!

I am planning a home birth and want a birthing pool. Does anyone have any ideas how we check out if our to floor flat's floors can bear the weight I had kind of assumed they would but now a few people have scared me with talk of floors collapsing etc!

How practically can we find out if the floors can bear the weight? who can check out this kind of thing.

DP just says - we will be fine but now i want reassurance. do we have to get a surveyor round for such a thing?

Have you got a management company for the block? They would be a good start, but tbh ours still only said it would prob be ok and its not down to them if there is a problem!

Where is the pool coming from? The supplier should be able to give you the weight of it filled which is what you compare to the load bearing ability of your floors. Its possible you'll need to contact a surveyor to find it out if you don't have a management company or the building owner to speak to. Our block is an 1950's brick build block, with concrete floors and we're third floor and a small size pool was fine - so if yours is the same I wouldn't worry ;-)

we have wooden floors so no reassurance of concrete.

I am not sure how to find out load bearing ability of floors. Will check out with our management company and see if they know anything. I doubt that they have had such a request very often.

thanks

In an emergency they would tip all the water out if needed. Would that cause problems for the flat below? Worth thinking about. Good luck with your homebirth op :)

How do you tip the water out of a birth pool? Especially with a woman in it (which is what I assume you mean by emergency). Isnt it rather heavy?

Knee on the side and let the full contents out over the house! Thankfully I've never had to but a colleague has.

Gosh! Though wouldn't have worked on mine this time - it wasn't the inflatable sort . Terrifying to be so urgent you have to do that though.

I think that if it is an emergency, they will demolish the pool if necessary.

weeonion are you allowed a waterbed in your flat? If so, I think the floor should hold a pool. If not, I wouldn't risk a pool.

fattycow - dontknow if we are allowed a waterbed - never saw it mentionned in any deeds!
I think it would cause major problems if we had to tip entire contents of pool out - yup! I imagine it would in most flats though!

I wouldn't! imagine crashing through your downstairs neighbour's ceiling whilst in labour?

I had a pool at home for my dd1, 1st floor flat max about 20 years old. I stressed about it for ages and then found some new delight of pregnancy to focus on!

we bought our pool from bpiab but most suppliers will give you info relating to this. I think we were told to stick to putting the pool in wwindow bays or corners as there Is more structural support.

my husband convinced me it would be fine by asking me if we had a party and 50 people were stood in that room, would you be worried about the floor collapsing?!

The floor didn't collapse and the pool was fantastic (although apparently a nightmare to clean up, Obvs I was a little busy by then though!).