Choose the right flood barrier for your site.

Water-activated sandbags

Each bag stores flat at 270 g and swells to 18–22 kg within 2–3 minutes of contact with fresh water, forming a barrier 600 × 400 × 120 mm. No sand, shovels, or filling. A single pack of 4 covers most standard doorways; two layers of two packs protects to roughly 240 mm.

Their real advantage is filling the irregular gaps rigid panels cannot bridge — roller door bases, window wells, and drainage entry points. The limitation is that they are single use: once activated they cannot be deactivated, so replacement is an ongoing cost each season.

Oxford barriers

PVC-coated Oxford cloth stretched across a reinforced steel pipe frame that telescopes from 150 mm to 1,300 mm wide. Water pressure on the upstream face presses the base down against concrete or pavers, forming a watertight seal without anchors. Link units end-to-end for spans wider than a single pack.

At 5.3 kg per pack they fold flat for cupboard or boot-of-car storage and set up without tools. Because the frame adjusts to irregular shapes, they are usually the practical choice for side entries and garden gates where a rigid panel would need custom fabrication.

Aluminium flood barriers

Marine-grade aluminium panels made to measure for the opening. There is no standard size: the width is built to the entrance and the height is set by how many 300 mm panels go in, so 300, 600 or 900 mm and upwards. Rubber gaskets and compression seals along the base and side posts close the barrier against the frame, and no water passes through.

The panels slide into the anchor channel by hand — one person, under 10 minutes, no tools on the day — and lift straight back out once the water is gone, so the doorway or driveway is clear for normal use in between. Anchor channels are installed once and stay in place. Every set is quoted per opening after a measurement.

ABS portable flood barriers

The point of these is that nothing gets installed. No anchor channel, no drilling, nothing fixed to the building: the panels stand freely where they are placed, so you set them across the opening when water is coming and take them away when it is gone. Panels sold online are 750 mm high, with 1,000 mm and 1,200 mm available on enquiry.

Modular polymer panels that link and stack to cover wide openings. An 8-panel pack covers a standard double garage door or loading bay entry, and the panels reconfigure to different widths as a site changes.

At $1,659 per 8-pack they sit between demountable aluminium and engineered gate systems on cost, which suits commercial sites needing wide-span coverage across several openings rather than one deep seal at a single door.

Automatic flood barrier systems

Water-level sensing raises the barrier at a configured threshold; remote or central controls lower and reset it. This is the only option for a site where nobody is reliably present to deploy a manual barrier — basement car parks, after-hours loading docks, unstaffed infrastructure.

Each installation is custom-engineered around the opening, flood conditions, electrical supply, and control requirements, so a site assessment always precedes a quotation.

Hydrodynamic Passive Flood Barrier

The barrier rises on the floodwater's own buoyancy and resets by gravity — no power, sensors, or operator. That makes it the alternative wherever an automatic gate's electrical supply is unavailable or not dependable: river frontages, stormwater outlets, and remote vehicle entries.

A stainless-steel exterior over a polyurethane internal structure carries wall-mounted waterproof sealing membranes, and applicable engineered configurations support vehicle loading to 20 tonnes. A site assessment confirms local water-flow conditions first, because the mechanism needs suitable flow to activate.