Fixing flooded buildings and basements: Introduction

Flooding is an issue that's likely to affect both home occupiers - owners and tenants -- and the insurance industry for the foreseeable future. It causes distress to property owners and occupants, and the technical difficulties associated with the repair process can test experts to the limit.

The background to this guide arises from the recognition that organizations in the insurance and construction industries can jointly offer solutions which bring together the main parties to restore insured property to its condition before the flooding event.

Since flooding invariably involves more than one property, this joint industry approach often means involving all parties for all affected properties working together to produce mutually satisfactory results.

1. This river floods parts of this UK area several times each year.

It is with this in mind that a group of like-minded professionals started to work together to create a manual of best practice aimed specifically, although not exclusively, at the insurance industry, professionals within that industry, and linked industries such as mortgage lending. It is not entirely intended as being a stand alone document - indeed there is already a great amount of data and information available elsewhere - but hopefully it will provide a useful reference document if used in isolation.

The flow of the contents of the guide take the reader through the sequence of events in a flood claim -- from inspection, through the drying process, to the recommendation of flood resistant repairs. In addition it assists those who are perhaps less experienced in flood repairs to understand some of the basic insurance and technical issues involved, and some elemental requirements of customer care - recognizing that inadequate communication and management of expectation rests at the heart of many of the difficulties that occur.

For the avoidance of doubt, this guide is concerned with 'large bodies of water ' - not the effects of small or isolated events such as in the case of a burst water tank, although it's entirely feasible that some of the considerations that apply to large events would also apply to small scale flooding.

The insurance and repair of flood damaged buildings is complex but Repairing flooded buildings and basements attempts to simplify and apply logical organization to these areas.