Seeing the inequitable way flooding affects people and communities is what inspired inventor Andrew Parker to create the FloodSafe House™. Triggered by sensors, the FloodJack® system automatically raises the entire house 1.5-2.0 meters above ground level, returning it back down when floodwaters recede. People can now return to their homes days – rather than months – after a flood. We’ve been working with Andrew for the last five years and we asked him to share the insights, challenges and technologies that are helping transform flood resilience.

Q: How did the idea for the FloodSafe house come about?

Andrew: Flooding ruins homes and lives. Seeing the devastating effect of floods on people round where I live was my start point. So too was my frustration with the short-term fixes the industry was relying on. I’m a builder and a developer. I’ve seen what happens when, as many developers do, the answer to flood risk is to raise the land you build on. All that achieves is diverting the water towards other people and homes. Dredging local waterways also makes little difference. So I thought, rather than raise the land, why not raise the house instead?

Q: Why did you choose WSP to partner you in developing FloodSafe?

Andrew: There are so many dimensions to getting something like this right, from water engineering to emergency response, building and planning. WSP had all of those disciplines in one place. When I met their water engineer, Simon Gilliland, he just got it. Flooding is complex. There are many different types of flood and Simon was able to translate very technical water engineering into language I could understand and act on. He’s been a real enthusiast and a great fellow traveller on this journey, even introducing me to PhD students at his old university, Liverpool, who we are still working with together. We wouldn’t have got so far so fast without him.

Q: What inspired the mechanism at the heart of your invention?

Andrew: I knew hydraulics weren’t an option as you can’t store the volumes of oil needed in and around housing. My penny-drop moment came watching a documentary on TV about the resupply of North Sea oil rigs. They were using mechanical jacks to raise goods from supply ships hundreds of meters up to the platform. If mechanical jacks could achieve that in the middle of the North Sea, then maybe they were the answer to raising the 35-40 tonnes of an average new-build house safely above floodwaters.

Q: Are those mechanical jacks the little bit of genius in the FloodSafe system?

Andrew: They’re key, and are designed for our use but if there is one bit of genius in the system it is the electrics. Experts told me raising a 40-tonne house would take a 7kw motor. Building regs for residential homes limit motors to a maximum power of 2.2kw. I looked in the market for solutions and then came across a very astute electrical specialist Roger Clayton who focus is in Critical Control Panels, between us and after many unsuccessful attempts we and found a solution that would allow us to raise the whole house using a motor that came in at that limit. My motto for this project has been ‘it must not fail’, otherwise what reassurance would it offer? So we designed all the electronics without sensitive microprocessors or batteries that could drain.

Q: There must have been a commercial challenge too, to make FloodSafe viable for lower cost homes?

Andrew: Exactly. You can engineer your way out of anything with unlimited budgets but we were always focused on making FloodJack® System affordable. Our way round that was to use standard off-the-shelf products and to set up a simple, safe factory system to construct the houses offsite. That’s helped keep not just financial but carbon costs really low. The commercial logic behind FloodJack® System is equally simple. Yes, you’re adding a product that makes a house a little bit more expensive, but it allows you to build on cheaper land.

Q: What stage is the project at today?

Andrew: We’ve designed, built and tested a protype house, raising and lowering it in excess of 1,500 times without a single issue. We’re now looking at building 10 Exemplar houses in North Lincolnshire. The whole idea is to make more land suitable for development. So soon we will be part of a 150-house development, where only 50 of those homes will be Affordable FloodSafe Housing and 50 will be normal for sale FloodSafe Houses™ all at risk and need to be fitted with FloodJack System. It will turn what would have been quite a marginal site for a developer into a practical commercial opportunity.

Q: Are you looking at any other applications of the system?

Andrew: We’re looking at mobile holiday homes which are often in countryside near rivers or the sea. 5,000 of them flood each year. We’re also investigating FloodSafe’s use for other structures that regularly suffer from floods, like electrical substations and bridges. To date, we’ve been focused on new homes, but we’re starting to look at retro fitting existing homes too.

Q: What’s been your proudest moment, and what would you like people to be saying about FloodSafe in five years’ time?

Andrew: I’m most proud of the fact we never gave up. As with anything new, there are challenges, but with people like Simon on board, we’ve worked through them all. I see the fear people round where I live in the Lower Don Valley have every time there’s heavy rain. I’ll be really proud if we can do something to lessen that fear. I’d imagine people in five years will say what they’ve said to me all along: why didn’t someone think of this before!

We, too, are enormously proud of our work with Andrew helping to transform flood resilience and bring peace of mind to the people and communities flooding affects each year.