The first 72 hours
after a flood

RISE Guide  ·  Updated June 2026  ·  6 minute read

Most homeowners think the first 72 hours after a flood is about the water. Drying it out. Calling the insurer. Finding somewhere to sleep. Photographing the obvious.

It is none of those things.

The first 72 hours is about decisions you do not yet realise you are making — decisions that will define the next two to three years of your life, financially and structurally. By the time those decisions become visible, they are almost always too late to undo.

This guide is not a checklist. It is a list of questions that, in the experience of two floods, ten upheld complaints, and a quarter-century in property, are the questions that separate a recovery that goes well from one that does not.

Did you photograph inside the consumer unit before the insurer's contractor opened it?

Inside every kitchen cupboard. Behind the freestanding furniture you moved while the floor was still wet. Under the sink. Inside the boiler housing. Behind the bath panel. The back of every freestanding appliance.

Most homeowners photograph the obvious — the standing water, the damaged sofa, the warped kitchen door. They miss the eighty per cent of the damage that emerges six weeks later, when it is no longer evidence. By then, the loss adjuster has been and gone. The contractor has stripped out what they were going to strip out. The argument about whether the boiler was damaged is over before it begins.

If you only learn one thing from this guide: photograph everything in fine-grained detail in the first 48 hours, before any contractor is allowed into the building. Video walkthroughs are stronger than photographs alone — harder to dispute, harder to claim incomplete.

Have you said anything on the phone to the insurer that they can later use to limit your claim?

"I think we're covered for everything." "It's not as bad as it looks." "I'm sure we can sort it out." "We'll just need somewhere for a few weeks."

Vague language given in crisis is later used to define the scope of what is covered, the duration of accommodation, the standard of the rebuild. Insurers do not transcribe these calls for nothing.

The right answer in the first 24 hours is short. Facts. When the flood happened. What is affected. Your immediate accommodation need. Get a claim reference number. Write it down. Stop there.

Do you know what your accommodation entitlement actually pays for?

Most policies cover £25,000 to £50,000 of "alternative accommodation" over the life of the claim. Most homeowners assume this means rent.

It does not.

That limit typically has to cover rent, council tax at the new property, gas, electricity, water, removal costs, and storage. Once the maths is done, a £50,000 entitlement often runs out in twelve to fifteen months. Many flood rebuilds take significantly longer than that — particularly if the first remediation fails and a second is required.

This is the kind of arithmetic that insurers do not volunteer in week one. By the time the homeowner realises, it is the eleventh month and the accommodation is about to be cut off.

Has anyone in the room used the words "BS 85500:2025" or "Ciria C790"?

These are the British Standard and the published industry guidance for flood-resilient construction. Together they define what a flood-resilient rebuild actually looks like — the damp-proof membrane detailing, the floor build-up, the wall-floor junctions, the moisture control strategy.

If no one on the insurer's side has mentioned them by the third day, that is information about the rebuild you are about to be offered.

Most insurer-recommended contractors specialise in volume flood remediation, not in flood-resilient construction. The two are different jobs. The first will look complete by month four. The second will still be intact in year ten.

The most consequential mistake most homeowners make in the first 72 hours is allowing a contractor to be appointed before this question has been answered.

Whose interests is the loss adjuster representing?

This question feels rude to ask. Loss adjusters are usually personable, professional, often genuinely sympathetic. They visit, they listen, they take notes, they explain.

They are also, contractually, working for the insurer. Their fee is paid by the insurer. The targets against which their performance is measured are set by the insurer. None of which makes them dishonest. All of which means their commercial interest is not aligned with the homeowner's.

Most homeowners do not realise this until somewhere between month two and month six — by which time the scope of the claim has been documented in language that benefits the insurer's position rather than the homeowner's.

By day three, are you choosing the recovery path — or just the one in front of you?

By the end of the third day after a flood, the homeowner is exhausted, displaced, frightened, and dealing with twenty things at once. In that state, the path of least resistance — the insurer's preferred adjuster, the insurer's preferred contractor, the insurer's preferred specification — is the one most homeowners take.

It is also the path on which the majority of flood recoveries go wrong.

There is another path. It does not mean fighting the insurer. It means having someone in your corner whose financial interest is aligned with yours rather than with the insurer's — someone who knows what BS 85500:2025 requires, what a Section 19 investigation can secure, what a Build Back Better claim is entitled to, what the loss adjuster is required to disclose, and what most contractors will cut corners on if no one is watching.

That is what RISE does. The first call is free. By the end of it, you will know what kind of recovery you are facing — whether you engage RISE further or not.

This is one of three practical guides published by RISE for English homeowners. The others are The £10,000 flood entitlement most homeowners never claim and How to force a council to fix the infrastructure that flooded your home. For the deeper case on why surface water flooding receives so little national attention, see The Cinderella of Flooding.