Gemma’s Flood Resilient Home 2023

Gemma’s Flood Resilient Home

After Gemma’s House 1970’s free-standing brick veneer home devastatingly flooded to approximately 900mm in 2022, a significant rebuild was required. The goal became to create a home that was more resilient to future flooding.

Some of the key flood resilience retrofit features that were introduced to this home include:

• Replaced loose-fill insulation with rigid insulation
• Replaced non flood resilient wall linings with flood resilient wall linings
• FC (fibre cement) sheeting replaced gyprock on bottom half of walls throughout – including a pioneering idea to leave gap between top and bottom wall panel big enough to allow hose nozzle in to clean wall sheet without removing.
• Replaced non flood resilient flooring with flood resilient flooring
• Replace non flood resilient skirtings with flood resilient skirtings
• A technique rather than flood resilient material was employed to leave a gap in the wall lining at the bottom covered by a high skirting board that is screwed on allowing for easy removal and easy clean out under walls, radically more air flow to speed up the drying process.
• Solid core doors installed instead of hollow core doors
• Replaced cavity sliding doors with swing or face of wall sliding doors
• Installed flood resilient cabinetry
• Stainless steel open shelves added to the kitchen
• Removable kickboard added
• Installed raised cabinetry
• Wall hung cabinets added to bathroom
• Installed a removable panel and replaced cavity bathtubs with freestanding bathtubs or showers

These elements correlate with items in the NSW Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation’s Flood Resilient Design Framework, developed to support the NSW Resilient Homes Program.