Watershed Innovations Best Sandbag Alternative - HydraBarrier Ultra 12 Foot Length 6 Inch Height - Water Diversion Tube - Light, Re-usable, & Eco-Friendly Flood Barrier (Single Unit)

We have been experiencing sudden, torrential downpours over the past two months. The ground water level is at an all time high, meaning water just runs off the surface in raging streams. The deluges are so bad lately, that I became concerned for my "basement", which is not a basement but the lower floor of a split level. I am glad I am cautious because I bought this and installed it across the sliding glass door to our lower patio. Well, a few days later we had another cloudburst--1.8 inches of rain in 75 minutes. The water was 5 inches deep against the hydra barrier, but my basement was absolutely dry.Yes, sandbags would work, but there is a peculiar effect of the hydra barrier. As the water pressure against the barrier increases, it compresses the barrier horizontally and expands it vertically. So while this is nominally a six inch barrier, during the worst part of the deluge the water depth was at 5 inches and there were two inches to spare.I am having a storm culvert added to my yard and have planted a lot of new shrubs and ground cover (the backyard is heavily wooded and grass does not do well) to mitigate the rain wash. In the meantime, this barrier is ready should I need it. I will leave it up whilst on vacation or traveling to be safe until I am certain the water mitigation is successful.It took 8 minutes to fill this, by the way, and we have relatively low water pressure here.Some notes:My patio slopes slightly away from the house, as it should, but the barrier tended to slide away from the house edges whilst filling. I solved this with three partially (30%) filled sandbags. I place one at each end anchoring the barrier near the house, and one in the middle. These were more than sufficient to hold the bag in place. Once the bag is filled it seems to stay put, but I left the sandbags in place. Believe me, rolling out this empty hydrabarrier and adding three light bags did the trick, and was faster and easier than deploying the estimated 24 bags of 40 pounds each it would have taken to build a ten-foot barrier six inches high. As I said, it took eight minutes to fill it.On the downside, the fill valve is an odd size. It does NOT accept a standard hose so you must either just hold it in place (tedious) or do what I did. I purchase a quick connect fitting (male) and it screwed into the fill valve. The valve is not designed for this, but it worked. I added a shut off valve to the end of the hose and now I can connect the hose and fill it easily. One must also allow the air to escape during filling, and the quick connect allows me to disconnect the hose, bleed out the air, reconnect it and resume filling. As I said, this process still took only eight minutes.Some sort of self-bleeding, quick connect attachment would enhance this greatly, but for $12 you can at least add a quick connect.Money well spent if for nothing more than peace of mind. But in my case, it saved thousands in water intrusion repairs.

Awesome , saved my garage

I ordered three of the 6" tubes with rush shipping plus the connectors in anticipation of Hurricane Harvey rains in Houston. They arrived in time and I was able to deploy them on Friday afternoon during a break in the early rains from the storm.My back yard does not drain well, and I am always struggling to keep water from coming in the house from the back. These were pretty easy to fill up with a hose and I didn't need the adapter that is sold as an accessory.It is important to get them pretty close to where they need to be permanently, as they will be hard to move when full (they hold around 70 lbs of water if I did my math right). The connectors are ok, but I would feel better if they were about 6 to 12 inches wider to grab more surface area. Since they are long round tubes, they will roll. easily. I had to hold these in place with some bricks, or they would have ultimately moved around during the rains totaling 39" I got at my house. They did help, although I accidentally cut one of the barriers when opening the package with my knife (was in a hurry). I was able to patch it partially with some tape, and it held about 50% of capacity.This is the third item I have used to act as a water barrier, having tried sandbags combined with plastic sheeting, and Quick Dams. Like any tool, usage involves some compromise.--Sandbags don't move easily under water pressure and can be stacked. They are heavy and smelly (after), and you may have to dispose of your bag contents somewhere later.--Hydrabarriers are reusable and can provide a reasonably unified line, but do take some set up time to fill, and will roll on a slope.--Quick Dams can be thrown out and swell up immediately, can be stacked somewhat, but are only fair barriers to keep water out and take weeks to dry out (mine were almost dried out from an earlier August 5" rainfall when Harvey came to town).I think these are better than quick dams for preparing before a storm. I do think they are took expensive relative to what you get

Just went through 2 hurricanes in Florida. This did a great job of blocking water. Disclaimer, I do not live in a flood zone and this will not stop flooding from waterways breaking or storm surge, however, still hurricanes can push a lot of water into your home under doors causing damage. Water levels can rise fast simply from the rain and wind. This performed better than sandbags and when its over, all you have to do is drain and store. Then next year you won't have to wait in line for many hours to get sandbags when the panic sets in. HIGHLY recommend

These barriers are great. They do the job.

Peace of mind. I used it one but water never got close to test it. Should do what it claims

I bought four HydraBarriers, two 6" x 12 ft and two 6" x 6 ft. I bought them in Oct 2023 and put them aside for when there was a potential flood. We live in San Diego County and that time came last Sunday. We set them in front of the garage doors. Not one of them even began to make a decent seal and water came in as if there was no barrier at all. All four were on level ground but two of them rolled away. I emptied them out and cleaned them up and was thinking of trying to sell them on Craigslist, but I would feel guilty passing this useless product on to someone else.

This will roll away if not barricaded in place. It did help.