Flood Alarms - Spring Time Means Flooding Across Most Of The Country

12 April, 2010

Mark Lowry

Have you ever really sat down and asked yourself if you need a flood alarm installed in your house? How about flood insurance? Most people think that home floods only happen to other people. However, the truth of the matter is much different.

Did you know:

Every year, flooding causes more than $2 billion of property damage in the U.S.

In a high risk area, your home has a 26% chance of being damaged by a flood during the course of a 30-year mortgage, compared to only a 9% chance of fire.

Roughly 25% of all claims paid by the NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program) are for policies in low- to moderate-risk communities.

Only 4.7 million people currently hold flood insurance policies across the U.S.

Water damage can devastate a home in a matter of minutes, but there are certain home security measures you can take that will help prevent an expensive home emergency. Mainly, you can install a flood alarm in the lowest point in your home. Whether you have a basement that seems to always flood in the spring, or maybe a water heater or laundry room that just might spring a leak, a flood alarm can help you act quickly to minimize a greater potential damage.

Many homeowners choose to have a home security burglar and fire alarm installed in their house, which is a good thing, home security monitoring from ADT home security is invaluable. This offers great protection, particularly when the family is away from the house. However, what happens if an emergency occurs in your house and it’s not a fire or a burglary? How will you find out about it if you’re on summer vacation? Will you know that your basement is quickly filling with water, or will you return home two-weeks later to a disaster that will leave you paralyzed and speechless?

A relatively inexpensive flood alarm can save you tens of thousands of dollars in flood repairs because they’re designed to detect moisture and rising water levels quickly and in turn notify you and your home security alarm monitoring company when rising water levels are detected. You can choose to be notified by email, text message, or a call from a highly trained dispatcher at your home security provider's monitoring center.

This means that you’ll be able to respond quickly, even if you’re out of town, across the country, or even overseas. You can quickly call a neighbor or family member to get over to your house to get the water main shut off, preventing further flooding and further damage.

Now that spring has arrived, it’s time to take flood control very seriously. Many parts of the nation had a particularly heavy winter, which means snowcaps are at very high levels. As spring arrives and brings with it a warmer sun, that snow will start to melt, and it will raise the water levels in every creek, stream, river, and lake in its path. If you live in an area of the country that has had a bad winter, and live near any tributaries or waterways, now is the time to get a flood alarm installed in your house.

A flood alarm is an inexpensive investment that can save you thousands of dollars and weeks of inconvenience as you let your house dry out. This often takes weeks and can literally displace your family to temporary living quarters.

The worst thing you can do is nothing, or to go on pretending that it only happens to the other guy. Well guess what? Someone else is having that same thought, and there’s a very good chance he’ll be right instead of you.