When you protect a building from flooding, the honest starting point is this: you will not keep every drop out. Good resistance measures hold back most of the water, but some will still find its way in. What happens next, how fast the building dries out and gets back into use, is where a puddle pump earns its place. That principle is exactly what the Cumbria Flood Resilience Showcase set out to demonstrate, and in 2017 we were glad to play a small part in it.
Flood Protection Solutions Ltd donated a Tsurumi LSC1.4S puddle pump to Botcherby Community Centre in Carlisle as a contribution to the project, which was led by the flood campaigner Mary Dhonau OBE, better known across the sector as "FloodMary".
Why Carlisle, and why this building
Carlisle was chosen for the showcase after suffering severe flooding in both 2005 and 2015. Botcherby Community Centre was hit hard. Much of the kitchen was destroyed, and the building needed a full restoration alongside a proper resilience upgrade.
That matters more than it might first appear. Community buildings are where people gather, get information, and shelter when their own homes are out of action. If centres like this can be made to recover quickly after a flood, the whole community recovers faster. Protecting one building is really about protecting everyone who relies on it.
What a puddle pump actually does
A puddle pump, sometimes called a puddle sucker, is a submersible pump designed to clear shallow, standing water from a flat floor. Unlike a standard submersible that leaves an inch or more behind, a good puddle pump keeps going right down to roughly 1mm above the surface, which is what makes it the right tool for seepage after heavy rain or for water that has made it past flood barriers. Full specifications are on the LSC1.4S product page.
At Botcherby the set-up is deliberately simple. The pump sits on the floor inside the building, with a hose run out through a window to discharge the water safely outside. A permanently fixed discharge pipe is an option for a more robust install, but it ties the pump to one spot, and in a real flood you often want to move it to wherever the water is actually collecting. Keeping it portable was the right call here.
Resistance and recoverability: two halves of the same job
The donated pump is one part of a wider package known as Property Flood Resilience (PFR), and PFR works on two fronts at once.
Flood resistance is about keeping water out: flood barriers, flood-resistant windows, repointing, tanking and non-return valves on the drains. These measures buy time and hold back the bulk of the water.
Flood recoverability accepts that some water will still get in, and makes sure the building bounces back fast. At Botcherby that meant water-resilient plaster and a kitchen rebuilt in flood-resistant materials, so the centre can be cleaned down and reopened in days rather than the months a conventional fit-out would need. The puddle pump sits right at the join between the two. It is the thing that removes whatever the resistance measures could not stop.
This is the mindset shift the showcase was built to demonstrate. Do not just try to keep water out, plan for what you will do when some gets in. Pumps and recoverability are not an admission of failure. They are what turns a flood from a catastrophe into an inconvenience.
A pump is part of a plan, not the whole answer
The pump at Botcherby works because it sits inside a properly thought-through scheme: the right barriers, the right discharge route, and materials chosen to recover. On its own, a pump bought blind can underperform or be the wrong size for the space.
If you are protecting a home, a community building or a commercial property, that is the help we are set up to give. Browse our property flood resilience pumps and puddle pumps, use the Pump Finder to narrow it down, or for anything involving levels, discharge routes and design, ask about an engineering review.
Watch the project
In the 2017 film below, Mary Dhonau OBE walks through the Cumbria Flood Resilience Showcase with Simon Crowther of Flood & Water Pumps. You can also download the full project PDF.
We were delighted to support Botcherby Community Centre, and the project remains a clear example of why a positive, practical attitude to flooding, combining resistance, recoverability and the right pump, is the way to protect the places communities depend on.
