Aquobex discusses the launch of the FloodRecover brand and portfolio, a holistic flood resilience solution to enable cost-effective and insurable flood resilient repairs to properties of all types
Aquobex has been studying and researching the concept of making properties more resilient to flooding for the past five years.
Starting with some joint research with Baca Architects and BRE, we produced a white paper on how to build new properties to be fully floodproof.
Dropbox file here: https://tinyurl.com/2aevn5yk.
This evolved into a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Oxford Brookes University to research and test a number of components to discover how they reacted to flooding, drying and heat and cold.
This proved a useful exercise as it enabled us to test standard building products (brick, stone, mortar), as well as specialist products – cavity wall insulation, slurries and waterproof panels – and record how they reacted to wetting and drying cycles under different temperature ranges.
A very time-consuming process culminated in the discovery of a software package that was able to produce very accurate results that closely matched the manual testing leading to, hopefully, a development to rapidly test more products and encourage innovative new products for this market.
Beta sites in Cumbria and with Northampton County Council highlighted and resolved a lot of the design and installation issues to the extent that we are now launching the FloodRecover brand in association with our launch partners – Sealwise, Oliver Green Kitchens (Puustelli Miinus main distributors), Timberwise, Dragonboard and Delta Membranes, with more to follow soon.
A holistic solution
The FloodRecover solution offers a holistic flood resilience solution to all property owners from design, through implementation and accreditation as a method of delivering an insurable outcome.
FloodRecover is a water entry solution and can be used as a standalone approach to resilience or used in conjunction with flood resistance products such as flood doors and barriers to keep the water out.
It is not always possible to keep water out, even with a flood resilience strategy, so recoverable interiors are a good back-up solution and where flood depths are expected to be above 600mm then keeping it out is not an option for many modern construction properties.
Within the brand we have Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers to cater for a range of budgets, technical inputs, risk and time-to-occupancy.
Replaceable (Bronze) solutions might include installing plasterboard horizontally, raising electrics and using rising butt hinges on internal doors. These will limit future strip out and make drying and returning to home faster, but people and businesses will still face major disruption.
Repairable (Silver) solutions offer a mid-range solution with some repairs and redecoration required prior to moving back home or opening your business but the time out of your property is drastically reduced.
Recoverable (Gold) solutions will require minimal repairs and you will be back in business or home in a few weeks at most and with a lot of solutions, you may not be disrupted at all.
This is just an overview of what is available now and a sample of the flood resilience solutions that can be deployed in homes, workshops, schools, hospitals and factories.
After failing to find raised dishwashers for the Cumbrian kitchen re-fit a recent Internet search threw up a large assortment of them, demonstrating that flood proof homes are becoming more viable these day.
Keep checking our website for more updates.
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John Alexander
Managing director
Aquobex
Tel: 01923 518 582
Twitter: @aquobex
Please note: this is a commercial profile.
