Issues with river on property

[drmotorsport]

Currently house hunting and a cool property has come onto the radar. However it has a small river running through the garden which on the surface of things is lovely, but i'm terrified it would become a moneypit with garden being eroded/flooding, constant maintenance of the banks or having to bend over to the environment agencies, or worse still, having the unwashed public trying to sail up it Any experience/tips amongst the PH directors?

[Jaska]

A company I used to work for had one of these 'brooks' running through their land, basically in the car park.

Parked up one day and two blokes were walking along the bottom in waders...

Me: what are you upto?
Them: we are bored and decided to walk the entire river

It certainly made me think twice about buying a house like you describe unless the water is deep enough

[Chucklehead]

i lived in a house with a river running along the boundary edge of the back garden growing up.

I would never again live in a house with a river running through it.. or near it.

[bennno]

drmotorsport said:

Currently house hunting and a cool property has come onto the radar. However it has a small river running through the garden which on the surface of things is lovely, but i'm terrified it would become a moneypit with garden being eroded/flooding, constant maintenance of the banks or having to bend over to the environment agencies, or worse still, having the unwashed public trying to sail up it Any experience/tips amongst the PH directors?

Yes. Buy it with eyes open, or don't if you are concerned.

Presumably flood risk and its a slam dunk for flood risk insurance exclusions..... although flood re might help.

[Bluesgirl]

The Environment Agency will tell you if a property has been subjected to flooding. Also the Enquiries before Contract that a solicitor will make when you're buying will include questions about flooding history, risk etc.

[wisbech]

My parents' house has a river at the end of the garden. No issues. Yes, kids and dogs do go paddling in it, but the local water authority maintain it well. Flooded once, but didn't flood the house, just the garden

[LimaDelta]

We have a small river (fordable) through our property. It joins on a larger river and then on through the village. Other than our property it is all commercial woodland or farmland nearby, so I'm not too concerned about people walking up it. In fact it forms part of our boundary for a few hundred metres, and the other side has open access. I sometimes walk the full length into the village with the kids in the summer, so it is something people do, and if you are in a popular spot I guess it is possible you might have the occasional visitor? Erosion is not much of an issue, it is at the bottom of a steep bank, and even though it is quite deep and fast flowing through the winter, it is far enough away (and well below the elevation of the house) not to be a concern for flooding.

[Panamax]

You may find home insurance is a lot more expensive than you expected. Insurers have suffered heavy claims from previous flooding incidents and I think the government had to strong-arm them to continue offering insurance near rivers at all.

[TGCOTF-dewey]

Depends on how far from the house is from the river.

Our old house had a river at the bottom of a very small garden.

Was great in summer... Come winter it was VERY damp.

Loved sitting eating breakfast and feeding signets over the summer months.

[MOBB]

We were in the process of buying a nice place that had a small brook running between the house and garage.

Survey picked up that the path between the house and brook was collapsing slowly, and there were fine cracks starting to show in mortar.

Costs estimate - once the surveyor started talking about piles and huge machinery required to brace the brook, we ran away.

[RizzoTheRat]

We have a stream at the end of the garden, although the other side of the hedge so don't really notice it other than the amount of frogs/toads I find when mowing the lawn. Only discovered when checking something else about boundaries recently that we own a section of the river.

About 10 years ago the water came half way up the garden a couple of times, but they cleared it out downstream several years ago and not had a problem since. It is in a zone 3 flood plain though (you can look a post code on the Environment Agency website to see the risk). No issues with insurance until a few years ago when we moved out and rented the house out. Apparently there's some government thing about insurance rates if it's your residence, but as soon as we rented it out the insurance doubled.

[JQ]

Chucklehead said:

i lived in a house with a river running along the boundary edge of the back garden growing up.

I would never again live in a house with a river running through it.. or near it.

Why, what happened?

[PurpleTurtle]

My parents' house in the Midlands had a beautiful picturesque brook running though the garden in the late 70s, we had idyllic summers as kids building tree houses in a big oak tree overhanging it and had a fantastic rope swing with ubiquitous old car tyre over it, hours of fun.

Then a new housing estate was built about a mile away and all its surface water run off seemed to end up in said brook. After three heavy downpours over consecutive winters which resulted in their house and about 40 neighbours in the road being completely flooded the local authority had no real option to put the whole thing underground.

Cue two years of construction disruption, their delightful mature garden being decimated of trees, and then both neighbours each side trying to do a pincer movement style landgrab when the fences went back up, resulting in several years of legal battles. Fortunately my Dad took a number of 'before' photos that he was able to present but it still took a load of legal wrangling over plans, title deeds etc.

So yeah, it was pretty, but became a complete ball ache due to the actions of others.

[Snow and Rocks]

It depends on what sort of "river", how far away it is and (probably most importantly) how far below the house it is.

I grew up with a large stream flowing at the bottom of the garden. It floods part of the garden every winter but it's 50m away from and probably 10m below the house so it causes no harm. Great memories of paddling in the summer, catching trout, watching kingfishers, herons and an occasional otter. My parents still live there and I can't think of any real downside they've faced in 40 years.

[bennno]

Panamax said:

You may find home insurance is a lot more expensive than you expected. Insurers have suffered heavy claims from previous flooding incidents and I think the government had to strong-arm them to continue offering insurance near rivers at all.

FloodRe scheme addresses that, bit only for principle residences and for as long as it continues.

[Jeremy-75qq8]

A friend ( he is on here ) has a small water course running through his building site. It has taken a year Or more to sort. Beware

[C n C]

On another angle, and I know nothing of this so might be complete rubbish, but given the cost of electricity and the focus on renewable sources, would there be any option of installing a small hydro-electric generator to provide "free" electricity?

[alscar]

I’m sure on a summers day with a duck gently floating past the idea sounds lovely.
On a winters day with the river fast rising and a level garden leading to a house close by it’s the sort of nightmare that I would hate.
I have enough issues with just water coming off our own land after a heavy rain period though so am biased against !

[Moominho]

One of the issues I've found with some of our local brooks/streams, is that people with misconnected drains etc cause the water to not be the cleanest. A lot of these brooks are supplemented by rainwater drains, but some of these end up being used as kitchen gullies, or worse...

[M1AGM]

I’d never buy anything near a river or brook. Know too many people who have got flooded by those ‘one in a hundred year’ events that seem to happen a little more frequently than that.