Flood risks of potential properties.

[heldinadream]

So I had a long and very helpful thread the other day about choosing between 2 properties in Bristol, and there was a lot of feedback that neither were right, which is possibly the case.
Someone posted this property which looks totally spot on even in the area that works for us, but if you look on Gov.Uk it's got a high risk of flooding from surface water. This is a big deal for us - DH is an actual climate scientist and bought our current property 20 years ago partly on grounds of low risk all round, before anyone else really bothered. However, this is not his particular area of expertise, and he says the Gov info is a bit general and not necessarily reliable.
So now we're arguing about whether to go and see this house. I really really really want to see it, and he pretty much wants to buy one of the others.

Does anyone know more about how to interpret the Gov flood risks? Here's the house.

5 bedroom semi-detached house for sale in Durleigh Close, Headley Park, Bristol, BS13 (rightmove.co.uk)

And here's the other thread if anyone's interested.

PLEEEASE HELP CHOOSE HOUSE! Links included! | Mumsnet

I'm in the same position as you. Amazing property and I know that it's never flooded before, but it's high risk on the map and I know that the weather is getting more extreme.
I don't know the answer, but do check home insurance prices before you even think about it. It looks like we'd have trouble getting insured at all with our potential buy, but that may be because it's relatively close to a waterway.

It doesn’t sound good, OP. However, we had a house in France which was within 300 metres of a river, so in the red flood zone of a river which flooded every year…..except that we were 100 metres above on the hillside overlooking the river, so most of the département would have been under water before we even saw it.

You can look at the contour map, and the waterways, you might be lucky. What does the current insurance say?

I'm with your dh. If the house is at 'high risk' of flooding, why would you want to live there? Climate change is making our weather much wetter.

Have you ever had to move out for eight months? Ever had your kitchen covered in knee deep liquid sewage? All your irreplaceable possessions destroyed? Ever had house insurance refused? Ever been faced with the fact that your home is worth a quarter of what you paid for it? Because that could be the reality.

That's assuming you can get a mortgage on it in the first place.

I totally agree, I'm really just looking for info on how to find out more detailed and house-specific risk info. Other houses like two houses away are very low risk, the road is at the top of a hill and it's surface water not rivers or other risks, so we're trying to evaluate what it all means because it's possible this house meets all our tick boxes and we're finding it nigh on impossible to find anything else that does.

We don't need a mortgage, we're mortgage free and the proceeds of our own house will buy this one.

And we've both been involved in climate and environmental politics for fifty years so we're hyper aware of the potential risks and feel stupid to be in this situation, but can't find another damn thing we like!

Look at the approval given this June to uncover the River Malago which flows under that area.

There is a lot of civil engineering work planned which may or may not improve the flood risk. Maybe your DH could do some reading. It might help.

Thanks we'll look into that. But it's not the Malago that's the risk, it's low risk of river flooding. It's surface water. So I'm not sure how that connects (DH is in the shower ATM, also we're both stressed because we've sold our house and are moving into a rental on the 30th, so it's full on currently).

You mean the vendor's house insurance? I didn't know we could access that info.

Talk to neighbours in that area, we are high risk for surface water flooding, in actual fact the road outside gets flooded by about 3 inches of water due to the gradient of the road and blocked drains. The water comes no where near the houses.