Anyone have a brook / stream / river very near their house?

[Packar]

Next week will be viewing a house that has whats described as a running brook (in the EAs particulars) in the back garden which is just decking. The house and decking appears about 5ft above the water which seems fast flowing from the images and the house, in parts, seems only about 4ft away from the banks of the water. The brook appears about 4ft wide.

I really like the house and don't have DC but might the water be an issue? How would I find out? What should I look out for? And what questions should I ask the EA?

OP if you end up not going for this house, would you be able to link it please? Very curious to see! Thanks.

Honestly the latest climate projections are extremely worrying. I would not even care to view a house with running water so close. Warming is happening far faster than the science predicted, a lot of people will find their homes uninsurable in the next 15 years, in my opinion.

I live opposite a house that gets flooded occasionally by a beck - I looked at the Gov website and it was correct (neighbours house risk of flooding - high. Mine - very low. )

That is correct for me, so if you want an anecdotal e.g of the website's accuracy - hope that helps!

If you really love it you can put in flood defences to protect the house but that comes at a substantial additional cost.

I would look online at river outfalls from sewage treatment plants too as well as the flood risk.

You can also do a FOI to the Environment Agency asking how the river is managed, future plans for flood defences that might impact it. Flood modelling for the area etc.

Personally unless I was very uphill from the water I'd be looking elsewhere.

Sounds idyllic to me. Personally I'd suck up the flood risk for the joy of having the water, but that's probably just me :-)

My first thought too!

Decking = rats generally.

You've clearly never been flooded.

If you happen to know any geographers you can download a GIS layer of historical flood outlines to see what's been recorded before. As pp have said smaller watercourses like this tend to rise and fall quickly, and if it is fast flowing that can mean a rapidly rising, higher velocity flood which does a lot more damage than slow-rising, slow moving water. Well worth talking to neighbours. Some local councils also publish post-flooding reports so if you google "section 19 <county council>" you might find info there as well.

Yes we do have a small stream. Our garden is quite a bit higher than it though so would take a lot of water to flood - out street is also on a hill so the houses at the bottom would flood first. House was built 1950s and has never flooded. You will be able to check flooding risk and history.
We do have to declare it on the house insurance but it doesn't seem to affect the price.
As for rats we have lived here 8 years and seen one live and 2 dead rats so not really a problem, rats are everywhere anyway.
We have a solid fence panelling fence between us and the stream which probably helps.

I love hearing the sound of running water when we've got the windows open at night in summer.

Mum lives ON a riverbank. The river is tidal and floods over the access track at high tide about once a month but it's never come up further than the entrance gate to the driveway and the house is on such an elevated site that it would have to come up another 10 feet to even tickle the doorstep. On postcode alone though it's classed as a massively high flood risk postcode and they've had to do some searching around with brokers to find insurance in the past.

Major issues they've had are offlead dogs coming into the garden (RIP our beloved cat), the entire world and its wife wandering past during lockdown on a daily walk, fishing contests meaning you have to wait for each guy to move his fishing setup before driving along a few yards, and couples coming to park up by the river for steamy car windows sessions... not flooding.

We had a brook at the bottom of our garden ( lived there 14 years) our boundary on the deeds was to the middle of the brook…..beyond the brook was lots of bramble and overgrowth then parkland….,so we had a lovely rural aspect but it felt safe……our garden was around 120ft long…..it probably flooded about 6 times whilst we lived there…..about 7 foot up our lawn…..we never said anything on our insurance ( never needed to claim anyway) and we never mentioned it when we sold .