See flooring slate as the answer to living on a flood plain

Flooring slate is a beautiful building material, and makes any room seem upmarket, yet it also has a benefit that carpet, wooden and laminate floors don’t have. If your house gets flooded, you will probably need to get new carpets or wood/laminate flooring, which will be riddled with sewage or stained beyond repair.

However, water washes over slate. In fact, the French have known this for years. They’ve been building houses in areas known to flood, but cunningly, they’ve been designing their houses to flood. They just accept it as a fact of life. Every year the rivers burst their banks, and each year the water washes over their hard ground floors. Then when the floods subside, the owner just takes a brush and some light detergent to the surface. Within minutes a hygienic, stunning floor is back to looking at its best. Flooring slate is the practical choice for a house built on a flood plain.

But to really prepare for the next deluge, you should adopt the other tricks the French use. Have your living room on the first floor, along with all electrical items that you intend to place close to the floor. It also helps to have large ground floor doors. These help for quickly washing down the ground floor, and pushing waste water out of the house. They also let you quickly dry out your house, as the wide doors allow for extra ventilation. As a result, you might plan your home with a ground floor kitchen, dining room, conservatory, bathroom or utility room. This puts the bedrooms and recreational areas upstairs out of harms way.

For extra flood protection, proof your ground floor with a layer of concrete before laying the flooring slate. That way, you can keep out some of the groundwater too.

The sooner people consider the future certainty of the next flood, the better. Over five million UK homes are in areas prone to flooding, and if you can limit the damage to your property or contents, you won’t have to make large insurance claims. Of course, if you accept that flooring slate will give you a saving in the long run, you can also spend a little more on a kind of slate you particularly like. Perhaps China black slate is more your thing, or rustic green slate. Whichever you choose, it will stand the test of time.

Editor’s Note: The Natural Slate Company Limited (http://www.theslatecompany.net) are represented by the search engine advertising and digital marketing specialists Jumping Spider Media. Email: info@jumpingspidermedia.co.uk or call: +44 (0)20 3070 1959 / +34 952 783 637.