A single flood can disrupt your work for weeks or months and severely undermine your business reputation. Your insurance premiums or excesses can be sent through the roof. Flood can ruin your business.

Tens of thousands of commercial premises are in flood-prone areas of the UK and , until recently, the main protection that business owners had to rely on was sandbags and manpower – often too little, too late.

Now, the patented, BSi approved Rapidam from Floodguards provides a fast, highly effective defence against flooding. Rapidam Boltdown is a temporary physical barrier that is erected at flood danger points.

There are two types of patented barriers available.

Rapidam Free Standing

Is quick and easy to deploy. 20 meters can be erected in less than 15 minutes, with further 10 meter sections added as necessary using Floodguards’ patented watertight zip technology. Rapidam Free standing needs minimal pre flood preparation.

The flow patterns of water are predictable. Rivers are known to burst their banks at particular points, culverts to overflow at known places and hollows to fill beyond their capacity in specific circumstances.

In every case, the effects can be very costly. Labour-intensive sandbagging or unsightly earthworks have been the traditional, but often inadequate, response.

Now, the patented Rapidam Freestanding Barrier from Floodguards provides a fast, efficient and, above all, effective solution to flooding.

Like the Rapidam Boltdown, the Freestanding version is quick and easy to deploy. 20 metres can be erected in less than 15 minutes, with further 10 metres sections added as necessary, using Floodguards’ patented watertight zip technology.

Unlike Rapidam Boltdown, Rapidam Freestanding needs minimal pre-flood preparation. Penetrator screw anchors, originally developed for the United States armed forces and only available in the UK from Floodguards, are used initially to hold down the Rapidam Freestanding Barrier.

Each anchor can hold 2,500 lbs – the equivalent of a cubic yard of crushed granite. The barrier’s leading edge is then buried in the ground or covered, just to stop water initially flowing underneath.

As the water rises, its sheer weight holds the barrier in place, adding greater and greater strength to the structure.

Rapidam Bolt Down

Its effectiveness is not only a result of its strength – Rapidam Boltdown holds back a tonne of water per metre – but also of its speed of deployment. Ten metres of Rapidam’s barrier can be rolled out in 30 seconds. Fully anchoring 20 metres takes two people approximately 30 minutes.

Anchoring is simple. Expert Floodguards installers fix a permanent, unobtrusive concrete beam flush to the ground complete with stainless steel sleeves. The barrier is fixed to the beam with stainless steel, tamper-proof bolts and aluminium angle strips and pushed into place.

Rapidam Boltdown’s footprint can be as little as a metre and the barrier can be sealed to walls or extended in 10 metre lengths, using Floodguard’s patented watertight zip technology. The barrier can be left flat until the last moment to provide maximum site access.

Once the danger is passed, just unbolt the barrier, clean it – the material already contains anti-fungal, -ultraviolet and -alkali treatments – and roll it up, ready for the next flood.

Rapidam Freestanding was awarded the BBC Tomorrow’s World millennium Invention of the Year.