Inventor hopes idea will open up land for construction

Builder Thomas Meere with a model of the house

ARCHITECTS puzzling over the problems of building on land prone to flooding have obviously not been reading the Bible.
As the story of Noah and his ark illustrates, it is a fruitless task trying to fight a flood – better instead to rise above it.
And that is exactly what a house invented by Gospel Oak builder Thomas Meere does, floating its occupants safe and dry above the flood water until it subsides.
For Mr Meere, a regular worshipper at St Dominic’s Church in Southampton Road, his eureka moment came, not while reading the Bible, but as he watched homes washed away on the TV news.
Mr Meere, who lives well away from London’s flood plains in Shirlock Road, said: “I thought: there must be an easier way of dealing with this problem than trying to barricade rivers.”
So he took to his garden shed, and a year later came out with his model of a floating house. It took another four years to be granted his patent.
Under Mr Meere’s design, flood water would run into a huge tank submerged in the house’s foundations, rather than pouring into the lower floors of the house itself. The house’s interior is built on a concrete raft set within the tank, and as the water level rises so does the interior, guided vertically upwards by runners built into the exterior walls.
Mr Meere’s model is based on his family home in County Clare, Ireland, but he says the principle can be adapted to fit almost any building.
He said: “Factories, offices, old-fashioned designs and modern designs could all be built this way. Even whole terraces. It’s a very versatile design. It opens up a lot of land that couldn’t be built on before.”
He has already had a thumbs up for his design from engineers, including Sam Price, partner at consulting engineers Price and Myers, who is helping Mr Meere with the project.