The final line of defence against flooding lies with the property itself. Deploying effective domestic flood defence systems can mitigate the devastating effects of flooding. Traditionally, householders have relied upon the use of sandbags. The Environment Agency's and local authorities’ emergency response is strongly dependent on the use of sandbags. Nonetheless, there is very little published about the performance of sandbags as a domestic flood defence. This paper presents the results of experimental research carried out to assess the performance of sandbags as a domestic flood defence. The performance criteria included water leakage, structural integrity, ease of use and environmental impact. It is concluded that sandbags have only modest performance as a domestic flood defence. The results showed that leakage from sandbags increased rapidly with increase of the outside water level. A simple analytical analysis suggests that a sandbagged doorway behaves in a manner akin to a sharp-crested triangular weir. However, the efficiency of sandbags was dependent on the number of rows and the duration of the flood.

Experimental Study of degradation of oil impregnated paper has attracted enormous attention over the past 20 years worldwide. Outside the controlled conditions of the laboratory, however the real situation is more complex due to loading change, ambient temperature, fluctuation and sudden impulse impact. Therefore, interests in forensic examinations of scrapped old transformers have increased in recent years since it may be a way to obtain under-service ageing information and connecting the laboratory ageing experiment with the reality. This paper presents the effect of ageing on the breakdown voltage and examines the effect of oil quality on the breakdown voltage of the paper. Tests results of service-aged papers taken from three failed power transformers. The result indicated that ageing has a small reduction effect on the breakdown voltage, whereas the breakdown voltage is affected more by the density of the paper and the quality of the oil.