Does Installing Flood Vents Lower my Flood Insurance Rate in Alabama

In this blog, we'll answer one of the age-old questions: do flood vents lower flood insurance policy rates in Alabama?

As Alabama seems to experience a slew of severe weather leading to floodings in areas, like what we've seen more recently in Birmingham and Smith Lake, flood mitigation may become the key feature in making sure that property owners like you and your property will be protected from unwanted flood water damage and a bunch of headache in the aftermath.

Flood Vents

First, it's important to understand what is a flood vent and how does it work. Also known as flood gates or flood ports, flood vents are flood openings generally built-in with the structure of your home. This allows flood water to flow through the building instead of hitting the actual property. You can recognize this as the grills on the lower part of certain buildings and if you're living in Alabama, you might want to take notes.

Think of this as a new pathway for when flooding happens and you're directly in front of the water flow. These vents in turn take the water that should be hitting the foundation walls of your home or straining its exterior walls and allow it to simply pass through your property thus reducing and minimizing the damage of flood. Most of the time, the standard is that a property has at least two flood vents on two different sides of the exterior walls of your building in order for it to become viable as a flood mitigation step. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) actually considers this as one of the most acceptable flood mitigation activities in reducing the risk of flooding on your building, removing the building from the severe repetitive loss list, and doing an elevation certificate. Now, does this really lower your flood insurance rate?

Flood Insurance Rate

To answer the question that might've been bugging you all this time, yes. More than a utility in your home's structure, flood vents are key to helping FEMA, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), or even private flood in lowering your flood insurance premium rates. Any flood mitigation steps to reduce flood risks and possible flood damages are generally accepted as a condition for lowering your rates and the overall flood insurance cost for your building. This can mean that if you're paying about $1000 for your premiums, this can be lowered down to maybe $800 to $600. 

Flood mitigation activities include raising your lowest adjacent grade at least a foot above the base flood elevation. Now, the required distance between the lowest adjacent grade or your lowest floor compared to the base flood elevation depends on your floodplain management ordinances. Some states perform a "freeboard" level where a fixed distance should be followed on the construction in order for the elevation to be accepted.

This can really be helpful for those in high-risk areas, flood-prone areas, and the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) since they're going to be the ones with the higher or more expensive flood insurance premiums 

Keep in mind that installing flood vents is just a single step in lowering your flood insurance rates. It's important to note that FEMA has other requirements on flood openings in order to lower your flood insurance premiums. For example, if you have an elevated building that's in any flood zone that starts with an A or high-risk flood zones, the NFIP minimum floodplain management ordinance will require the enclosures of the structure on the lowest elevated floor to be designed with proper openings.

Another question that comes up with this how much lower will the rates are going to be once you have met the standards of FEMA and the NFIP via installing these vents? Well, this generally depends on how your rating score comes out. If we were to look at how this can be looked into when it comes to your Community Rating System (CRS) as a participating community, this move can bring your rates 40% less than they should have been.

Keep in mind as well that the purpose of these openings is to reduce or minimize not only the flood risk for the building but also its flood loss. Since the NFIP can only cover a max of $250,000 for residential buildings and $100,000 for its contents, the cost of flood loss may not be fully covered if, for example, your property was severely impacted by flooding.

At the end of the day, these flood openings and making flood insurance cheaper can only do much in flood mitigation. We encourage that you reach out with your local floodplain administrator to check on the best steps that you and your community can do when it comes to flood mitigation.

Remember, we have an educational background on flood mitigation, so if you have questions on private flood insurance, mitigation activities, flood coverage, or anything about flood policies, feel free to reach out by clicking our links below or checking our YouTube channel where we post daily flood education videos.