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Moderate risk of groundwater flooding

14 replies

burninglikefire · 26/09/2020 14:06

Hi,

Looking for opinions and advice from anyone with experience of this or expert knowledge. I have agreed a price on a property I am keen to purchase - in case it is relevant it is a semi-detached house built in the 1970s.

The environmental search has come back stating:

A risk of groundwater flooding has been identified at the site. This will be more of an issue for properties with a basement or other section below ground.

The level of risk is described as "moderate".

Now the property has no basement and further on in the search document is this paragraph:

Ambiental data indicates that the property is in an area with a moderate risk of groundwater flooding. Should a 1 in 100-year groundwater flood event occur, groundwater levels may affect basement areas. Properties without basements are not considered to be at risk from this level of groundwater flooding.

Finally, the FloodScore insurance rating is Very Low.

There are no other issues with search results. Can anyone offer any advice? Thank you!

OP posts:
Geekygeek · 26/09/2020 19:20

Ground water flood risk is a pain to evaluate and risk maps are usually based on high level geology mapping and historic data. Generally chalky and limestone areas are at risk.

Loads of information on the British Geological Survey (BGS) website and on the DEFRA data platform.

Key is the elevation your property sits at compared to surrounding land (is it elevated or in a dip), any history of flooding, do local OS maps show ground water features (springs, sinks, ephemeral streams).

Assuming nothing else comes up which could be linked (rising damp, history of flooding, waterlogged garden, sunken bath mysteriously filling up every other Friday) sound minimal risk. 1 in 100 yr flood equates to a 1% risk in a given year.

tilder · 26/09/2020 19:21

I wouldn't touch a property with flood risk.

1 in 100 means every year, there is a 1% chance of flooding. Each year.

Ground water, afaik, comes up from the ground and doesn't appear running down the road. Drainage of it is difficult as it means the ground is saturated.

Flood risk is worsening with climate change. Everyone has a different attitude to risk. Flood risk is a no go for me.

Saz12 · 26/09/2020 21:56

The risk identified is a one-per-hundred-year risk of flooding to basement. The property you’re looking at has no basement. Therefore the basement cannot flood, because it doesn’t exist.

You could call your surveyor to confirm.

NOTANUM · 27/09/2020 07:49

My house shows as moderate risk, as does every house in my area. In practice, it means very little. We're all on a hill and
surface water drains down to a stream.
We have excellently drains just outside our back door just in case.
However neither we, nor anyone we know, has ever flooded around here even during the worst of storms.

Hardbackwriter · 27/09/2020 07:52

Our house came up with this, as did our old house. In both houses the risk appeared to apply to a whole, huge area - essentially the whole town we currently live in. It seemed like if we didn't want it we needed to just not live in East Anglia?! We decided to live with it given that the house was still very insurable and, as I said, we'd have had to look at a different area entirely to avoid it.

AvaloniaFunk · 27/09/2020 08:27

BurningLikeFire.....
The property I have had an offer accepted on has a medium flood risk for surface water on the gov.uk website.
I am also concerned about it although the neighbours say there has never been a problem.
How did you find out the ambiental data and floodscore?

RedToothBrush · 27/09/2020 09:26

We was told this.

We checked the potential source of the groundwater flood.

It was 450 metres DOWNHILL from our house and in no way ever going to affect our property. Our house is at the top of a considerable hill and some considerable metres above sea level (which was one of the reasons we were keen on it anyway)

We thought it was some hilarious joke. Would our solitictors question it? Nope they didnt. Right pain in the arse it was too.
We had to establish what we had to do for insurance purposes. (Basically we ignored it after advice elsewhere because it was so farcical)

Everyone we spoke to about this, who knows where our house is has fallen about laughing and thought we were kidding. Including friends who have had family live in the vicinity of our house for the last 400 years or so.

To put it bluntly, if we have a groundwater flooding issue, then its not a 1 in 100 year event. There is no historical record of anything like that occurring.

Its would major disaster the size of which has not been seen in the uk in at least the last 1000 years (you are probably looking at several hundred thousand years tbh) which would affect most of the NW of England. At which point we figure we've got bigger problems than worrying about whether our house has flooded. Namely anarchy, disease, starvation and millions of people in this country dead and homeless.

And no im not exaggerating or being melodramatic. That just how bad this report was in way it was trying to suggest. I'm fairly confident that water still goes down hill and that even with climate change we aren't likely to see that much of an increase in rainfall. And I'm willing to bet my house on it. Quite literally.

My point is that what we found was these surveys are incredibly crude. To the point of being worse than useless for a lot of people because they don't necessarily look at the topography of the land and just do a 500m radius as the crow flies from the water source. Imho and in our experience its just some company doing a report making money out of utter bollocks and solitictors are only too happy to get on board with their cut too.

For us to have a raging torrent of water reach us from a source more than 15 vertical metres below the height of our house theres going to be some biblical event on.

We are far more at risk of surface water flooding, but even then we are still close enough to the top of the hill for it not to be a huge issue.

My advice would be to actually check maps of where this ground water is supposed to come from if you are worried. This can be done (though i forget how - our friend who lives 20 seconds around the corner was gobsmacked and found it on google as naturally they were a little concerned it didn't come up on their survey - turns out they are 50ms further away from the source so are apparently 'safe').

Then apply some common sense and a tiny bit of moderate intelligence.

I can't say i've lost sleep worrying about Noah's Ark floating past my house since we've moved in.

RedToothBrush · 27/09/2020 09:27

@Hardbackwriter

Our house came up with this, as did our old house. In both houses the risk appeared to apply to a whole, huge area - essentially the whole town we currently live in. It seemed like if we didn't want it we needed to just not live in East Anglia?! We decided to live with it given that the house was still very insurable and, as I said, we'd have had to look at a different area entirely to avoid it.
This is a less extreme version of the situation we were told.
SabrinaThwaite · 27/09/2020 11:26

We had this come up for our house too, a new build on sands and gravels. The groundwater flood risk covers a large area and whilst there is a winterbourne a few hundred metres away, it is at about 10m metres below the level of our property.

We don’t have a basement, although the adjacent Victorian buildings have shallow basements. I checked the ground investigation findings and groundwater levels were generally a couple of metres below ground level.

The environmental surveys that come with house purchases are very generic, likely generated from various databases and are heavily caveated.

Since this was my field (many years ago) I was quite happy to go ahead and haven’t had any problems with insurance wrt to flood risk.

burninglikefire · 27/09/2020 14:23

Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply - this is generally reassuring. Especially thank you to RedToothBrush, Hardbackwriter and SabrinaThwaite for sharing your own experience of risk of groundwater flooding.

Geekygeek This is probably a really obvious question, but - how can I find out the elevation of the property compared to the surrounding land?

AvaloniaFunk The information on the ambiental data and floodscore has been copied from the environmental search.

I have been in touch with the company who produced the search report and someone should be in touch on Monday or Tuesday to try and explain what the results mean.

I haven't organised an independent survey - can anyone suggest the type of survey and surveyor I should be considering: Home Buyers Survey or Structural Survey or something else?

Thank you again!

OP posts:
Lurkingforawhile · 27/09/2020 14:30

I would suggest a request to the EA for details of historical groundwater flooding for the property. We hold some records in our area (though I'm not sure if other areas do). There have been high levels at various points over the last 10 years so some good data. Enquiry result should come back in 20 days but often quicker. Also a full trawl of newspapers and also see if there is a local flood group who can provide intel. Some of the area we look after has very well known groundwater issues, and the locals have excellent micro-knowledge. It is a particularly grim type of flooding as it can last for months (although all flooding is horrible).

burninglikefire · 27/09/2020 14:38

Thanks Lurkingforawhile - is EA environmental agency?

OP posts:
Lurkingforawhile · 27/09/2020 14:54

Sorry - yes it is! Email is [email protected]

Daisydoesnt · 27/09/2020 18:51

how can I find out the elevation of the property compared to the surrounding land?

OP you can look up the elevation on an Ordance survey map

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