patrick.net

I find it very strange that people how live in flood plains to not take proper precautions to solve there problems permanently. If you were to have 2,300 cubic yards of fill dumped on your property, you can build a 80 x 80 feet hill 10 feet high. At $20 a cubic yard delivered, that's about $45,000 or about 1,500 truck loads of fill. Figure on additional cost of building some kind of retaining wall made of wood like a dock bulkhead or stone to minimize any washing away of your fill, and an bull dozer to move the fill around. Total costs would be around $60,000 to create a property that is high enough to not flood ever again which you can then build your house on, including parking for cars, shed, etc. Sounds pricey, but when you consider the loss of two vehicles and the cost of rebuilding a house every time it floods it would be far cheaper in the long run. While it wouldn't make sense in every case, moving probably would be cheaper. When you consider they recently flooded an area hundreds of miles across to relive the pressure on the New Orleans dikes, it's not like you could just move across town to avoid the flood. It's also cheaper to raise you house and put it on stilts, but this offers you no protection for your vehicles and other property. What usually happens in the house raising situation, the bottom get enclosed and becomes storage and a garage. Just imagine how much stuff you have in your garage and assume it gets flooded by an unexpected flood, gone are cars, air compressor, power tools, motor cycle, lawn mower, etc.

In my opinion raising the grade of your property is the only permanent solution. And it would be a great investment too, people would pay a premium for a flood proof house. You could even have a full finished basement if it was properly sealed for water intrusion. A 30 x 40 basement 6 feet deep (most houses are built on basement walls that are 2 or 3 feet higher then the ground level) would also eliminate the need to 250 cubic yards of fill, (about $5000).