Drowning in Flood Insurance

I just want to preface this particular post with, as much as I try to put a positive slant on my posts, because I need to stay positive, in this post you will hear how frustrating some of the hurdles have been and I am neither positive or happy.  But that will end in this post and I will move-on in tomorrow’s post.

If you live in a flood plane anywhere in the United States and have a mortgage, you probably had to purchase flood insurance.  Well we live in a flood plane and have flood insurance on the home we are living in.  Plus the Dream House is also in a flood plane as it is about 500 feet from the home we now live in.  We knew this when we started that project.  We had the acreage and it is in a beautiful town, so we decided that we would build our house so that it would survive in the event of a flood.

We had no idea that that would be tested so soon.  We had to contact a survey company and get the elevation that our new home needed to be built to to withstand a flood, plus comply with FEMA.  That survey cost us almost $2000. at that time.  They put a marker out and that is how we determined the height of our stem wall.  One of the things that we did do at the time of excavation, was to dig down so that the crawl space wouldn’t be so confining.  We dug it down to where the footings needed to be  and built the stem walls about 4 1/2 feet – to the top of the stem wall.  The stem wall was 1 foot above the flood level and then we built the floor on top which added another foot.  This gave us 2 ft above the flood level.

That stem wall was finished in July/August 1995, we had a flood in February 1996.  We had a false since of security when the levy behind our house broke up stream.  We didn’t anticipate this because we had not lived here the 30 years prior when the last flood hit Waitsburg in in the 60’s.  Although we had the flood, we saw first hand that the stem wall was built well above the flood plane.  It was more than a foot above the water.  The flood did not go over the wall.  The water did pert up inside the foundation as the water table rose.  There were area photos that made it look like an odd shaped swimming pool.  That was a very difficult year.  We had sheep and we were in the middle of lambing.  We lost all our lambs and one Ram.  All our fences were downed, but the home that we lived in did not get any water inside the house.  So we were dry and didn’t have any damage to the home.  It came as high as the top step.  This was February and we lost our electricity for 3 days.

Our journey in building this home has taken us almost 20 years.  We tried to do everything by the book and how we were supposed to.  In 1999 the flood rules changed.  They no long measured by the top of the stem wall, but by the top of the lowest floor.  They described the lowest floor as the crawl space or basement.  Do you see where I am going with this?  We dug our foundation down, remember?  Though the house was now built, the floors, walls, and roof, it is not considered built until it is finished.

We had the same surveyor come out and check the elevation and issue us a Certificate of Elevation which is when we found that we were no longer in compliance.  We don’t get a break on our flood insurance because we are considered to have a basement (even though we don’t) because it is more that 2 ft down.  Now our insurance (just flood) costs us $2000. a year and rising each year.

That made for a trying week, but that is just the breaks.  I am going to try and find the photos I took (before I had a digital camera) and show you how we dug it down.  On the plus side, the electrical, heating and plumbing contractors love that they can almost stand in the crawl space.  Someone benefits anyway.  No mechanical down there but duct work and plumbing.

Tomorrow’s post will be on the brighter side.

Annie, Treading Water