When it comes to flood protection for homes, many people focus on the windows, doorways and air bricks that could result in water ingress and result in their home flooding. While this is obviously an important step in protecting your assets, it’s vital that other areas of your home that contain goods areas are protected too. Garages are often an afterthought but are just as flood prone as the home itself and often contain huge amounts of valuables that could be totally written off in a flood. Our experts have put together some tips on help to protect your garage from flooding.

Defences

Installing flood defences is a simple way of ensuring that water doesn’t enter the garage and flood barriers tend to the suitable choice. Withstanding up to 900mm of water, barriers can hold back even severe flood waters by acting as a physical barrier between the sides of the entrance and being flush with the ground beneath. Barriers can be positioned in their slots when the risk of flooding is high and removed at all other times to make for easy entering and exiting.

Maintain Weatherproofing

Garages are situated outside and tend not to have traditional insulation or double glazing that houses do, making them more susceptible to weathering. They are usually built with a certain amount of weatherproofing including rubber seals around the doors and windows. As well as preventing rainwater from entering, this stripping can also prevent flooding and so needs to be maintained to keep a tight seal at all times.

Check the Foundations

Garage floors are usually concrete and with heavy loads to bare, adverse weather and natural settling, they often gain small cracks over time. However, these can be inlets for groundwater when the water table is high and so it is important to full them in with concrete vinyl or cover them with waterproof paint, with any larger cracks being dealt with professionally.