I was wondering if I could pick the brains of the proprty pin masses to find out how I might go about checking the likelyhood of flooding to a house I’m currently looking at buying ?
I heard rumours of a website (Council/planning owned) that you can put an address or maybe select an area on a map and it will give water level predictions ie. propensity to flood.
Is it possible to ring a home insurance provdier and find out if they will quote on a property that I don’t own - bascially to find out if there is any premium loading due to increased risk ?
Would there be any point in contacting the council (planning or environmental depts.) to ask them for information on a particular address ?
If it’s a relatively new build you could go to the planning office and look at the planning files and reports. I don’t know how long they’re available.
Failing that ask around locally, spend some time in the pub, go to the park or fundraising events to get to know the area and people.
Insurance companies in general have good info
Ask if they will cover it for flood protection
Flood maps is OK but definitely not the last word
Paste the link here may also help
Councils are currently carrying out Strategic Flood Risk Assessments of their functional areas as part a review of planning policy, mapping flood extents for 1 in 100 year floods (1% chance of flooding each year) and 1 in 1000 year floods (0.1% chance of flooding each year). Ring your planning department to find out whether one has been completed or one is currently being carried out as part of a Development Plan or Local Area Plan review process. If it’s done you should be able to check out the related maps and see if the property is within a flood zone.
The OPW are doing flood risk assessments for the major river basins, the Lee is done and a few others are underway, these are using very detailed survey datasets so are more robust and reliable but less extensive than the local authority ones. These will be done over the next several years to comply with an EU Floods Directive.
The OPW also have maps of flood incidents on their website but these are based on point data rather than polygon data and are of limited use. There was talk of the OPW using a model to generate a nationwide preliminary flood risk dataset based on topography, but not sure what stage this is at
Thanks a million folks. Plenty here to follow up - floodmaps.ie is already throwing up some interesting facts. I’ll ring the local planning dept. and an insurance company and see if I can get a more information.
This advice is not as flippant as it seems.
If you are west of the Shannon there are turloughs, underground rivers all over the place.
In winter they become overground lakes for a few weeks months, in very wet winters they become very large lakes. See Galway flooding 2009, much of this was due to overflow from turloughs
Check if there is an river nearby, wait for heavy rainfall, if near coast add in very high tide.
If east of the Shannon, in a flat plain like the curragh water from a nearby river can travel far once the banks have been breached.
If site is at the same level as or several feet below level of nearby river you might get wet.
Also try ringing an insurance company, see what quotes for flood insurance are like, if they refuse to offer it in that area make sure you are atop a large hill.
I like hills, good for exercise, tend to not get flooded
