For the past three years, engineering consultant Michael Antinelli has worked with the city of Miami Beach and its residents to draw up individualized flood-prevention plans. So far, he’s visited 140 properties and seen the same problems again and again.
“People are seeing water creeping up to their doors during king tides or heavy storms,” he says. “It’s getting underneath homes and rising through the flood boards.”
And once even a little gets inside, the damage can be extensive, as Antinelli, co-founder of Brizaga, a Fort Lauderdale firm specializing in flooding solutions and climate resilience, knows all too well. The first inch is the most expensive, with costs running to $25,000 or more.
If you’ve got tens of thousands of dollars or more to elevate your place, you can prevent that and pretty much flood-proof a house. The challenge is finding options more of us can afford.
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“We’re always trying to strike a balance between cost and effectiveness,” he says. “And that’s tough, because residential flood mitigation just isn’t as developed as systems for things like roofing, air conditioning or electricity.”
Still, even as climate change raises the risks (that does not even include daily storms that have soaked South Florida for the last month), there are ways to protect your place – from DIY steps that cost little to nothing to a host of new products. Here are some of the top tips from Antinelli and other experts:
Free and easy steps
The first move, Antinelli says, is to examine the existing drainage systems on your own property and in the neighborhood.
“It can’t be overstated,” he says. “Make sure drains, gutters and swales are clear.”
Clear drains: Most communities have underground drainage systems with street grates and curbside inlets. Clearing those of leaves or debris is your first and perhaps most important defense. If you don’t want to do it yourself, submit a request to Miami-Dade or your city’s Public Works department. If your house has individual drains or pumps also make sure they’re working.
Tend your swale: That little depression or ditch in front of your home in Kendall of Weston or just about any South Florida neighborhood is designed to collect rain runoff. It shouldn’t be full of yard clippings when the big storm comes. Modern building codes call for larger, deeper swales than houses from the ‘60s, so maybe making yours larger or deeper is an option —but first check that building codes or homeowners associations allow that.
Clean gutters: Yes, they handle rain off the roof, not the street. But well designed gutters also channel that water away from the house — except if they’re clogged with rotting leaves. Grab a ladder and scoop them out then hose it out to make sure downspouts aren’t blocked. If that’s difficult or too much work, consider hiring somebody to do it.
Raise your stuff: If you’ve got a room or outdoor space with persistent flooding problems, you can at least protect what you put there. You can raise furniture or other things during the rainy season. Even a few inches can make a difference. Terri Echarte, who has lived in her Miami Beach home for 25 years, did just that after one too many floods in her garage. She bought some concrete blocks to elevate her treadmill, washer, dryer and refrigerator permanently.
“We can still use it. It’s stable, but it’s raised so the motor doesn’t get wet,” Echarte said.
Take notes: If it floods, Antinelli says to make sure you document where water collects. It’s important to pinpoint potential trouble spots as you prepare for the next storm.
Barriers and other stuff to buy
Virtually any time a hurricane threatens South Florida, hundreds of people line up for free sand bags. They’re not perfect but they can help seal garage doors or other openings from rising flood waters. But they also weigh a lot and are hard to store. So there’s a growing industry of alternative easier-to-use flood barriers, ranging from $30 or so to more than a thousand bucks. Water, ironically, actually makes some of them work.
You’ll find hundreds of flood barriers on Amazon. Make sure to look at reviews. Antonelli said one of his biggest tips for homeowners is to get something easy to deploy – and that doesn’t require structural attachments. It’s important to know that adding a barrier does not guarantee a water-tight seal, but it is pretty helpful in most situations.
Sandbags: The old school option comes in all shapes and sizes. Sandbags and sand are both typically available at a hardware store or suppliers like Dandy Sand. If a big storm or hurricane is coming through Florida, many counties will set up distribution sites, but that means a lot of waiting in line at times you should be preparing your home. You can also order your own canvas sandbags online that have handles for easier carrying and stacking. They’re $34.50 each here.
Water barriers: These are more lightweight and easier to store than sandbags. When exposed to or filled with water though, they become a heavy anti-flood wall.
One popular brand, Quick Dams, offers “self-activating” barriers and “sandless sandbags.” The bags contain lightweight material that absorb water and expands and can be stacked just like regular bags, as can the barriers which come in a variety of lengths. The company suggests hosing them off or putting them in puddle for it to reach its full height of 3 and a half inches. A kit with 25 four-foot-long barriers runs just over $80 on Amazon.
There are other reuse-able PVC barriers that you fill with water from your house. One five-foot long one, suitable for a door or opening, runs just under $50 on Amazon.
Vizcaya Museums and Gardens has tested a very large – and much more expensive – version of this barrier from Tiger Dam that’s filled with salt water. Each Tiger Dam tube weighs 50 pounds dry and 6,300 pounds when filled with water. The flexible barrier was purchased with a $194,000 grant in 2019 from the State Division of Emergency Management that Vizcaya matched with $115,140. The museum has had two practice runs deploying the tiger dam, which takes about 12 hours and 10 to 12 people to fully inflate.
In maybe the most successful test of temporary flood walls, Tampa General Hospital escaped massive storm surge damage from Hurricane Milton in 2024 behind a 10 foot tall wall of braced aluminum panels made by AquaFence. The Norway-based company later opened an office in Tampa, seeing Florida has a potential growth market. But this barrier, which requires a lot of assembly, is designed mainly for large buildings.
Expandable barriers: These are designed to more precisely fit openings like home doorways, which potentially reduces the seepage over sandbags. Antinelli and Chris Rodriguez, a flood mitigation specialist with Floodproofing.com, recommends Dam Easy as a reliable alternative to sandbags. They can protect openings from flood waters as high as 28 inches of water, require no adhesives or permanent installation and can be set up in under five minutes by placing them between door jambs.
The cons: They are more expensive. One flood door barrier goes for just under $1,000. And they require space to store them when not in use.
Permanent barriers: If you have a front porch or front patio that floods during heavy rains, you might be able to enclose it with a concrete flood wall, Antinelli said. It would always have to be paired with some sort of temporary barrier for any entrance way that was at flooding risk. That’s another reason why it’s important to document where a yard or house floods. It can help decide where to place entrances.
“The last thing we want is for people to have to spend an extra 20 minutes lugging things around or figuring out that they’re putting the wrong thing in the wrong place,” Antinelli said.
Terri Echarte, the Miami Beach resident who put stuff in her garage up on blocks, also used the company Atlantic Shutters to add a permanent metal flood panel to her garage gate.
“If we’re gonna stay we gotta live with the water,” Echarte said. “And it does help. It’s not foolproof, but, you know, I don’t know that I’m going to live long enough to see the city make changes to upgrade our infrastructure.”
Pumps: These can be useful to capture overflow that might get into your garage or crawlspace — but it’s always better to keep the water out from the start. After all, you have to pump it somewhere. If floodwater is coming from outside and you’re just pumping it back out to the same area, you’re not doing much to stem the tide. That’s why the pump is only effective if it’s paired with a primary defense — like drainage systems and barriers — that keep the water from coming in in the first place, Antinelli said. Submersible pumps can start at $150 or so and can hit four figures or more depending on the size.
Waterproof walls: Replace traditional drywall with water-resistant plastic panels that prevent mold. For example, Enduraflood panels are designed to be easily removed, allowing wet insulation to be replaced and wood framing to dry before the panels are reinstalled.
Change your landscaping
These options can not only help with flooding, they can make your home more attractive and help with gardening.
Reconsider concrete: Porous material helps reduce runoff by allowing rainwater to filter through the surface into the ground. Natural areas like lawns and gardens absorb water but so do a variety of landscaping materials like gravel and also certain types of concrete interlocking or pavers with grid systems, designed to improve drainage. So ask when you make your design plan.
Outdoor hardscape areas can be built in layers, with water draining through the surface into an underground stone reservoir. Like with any drainage system, there’s clogging so it’s important to regularly remove leaves, debris and weeds. Prices here can vary widely depending on whether you do it yourself or hire a contractor and the size of the project.
French Drains: This helps direct runoff away from a house, reducing the threat of flooding or mold. Water is filtered through gravel and then carried away by gravity through a perforated pipe into a swale or landscaped area like a rain garden
In Florida, French drains typically cost between $20 and $75 per linear foot. According to Angi (formally Angie’s List), a platform that connects homeowners with contractors and businesses, the sites’ 2025 data shows projects range from $500-18,000 with a national average of $9,250. Indoor drains (like the kind inside a basement or crawlspace) can cost more, sometimes up to $100 per foot. Professional installation is recommended to ensure a proper slope and compliance with code.
Rain gardens: This is perhaps the prettiest way to catch those potential flood waters to use in your yard.
Nickie Munroe, an environmental horticulture agent with the University of Florida, loves them for the multiple benefits.
“Rain gardens help slow down water running off your landscape and allow it to soak into the soil,” Munroe said. “This reduces the amount of water entering storm drains, which can overflow during heavy rains.”
That water also helps recharge the aquifer and reduces the flow of freshwater into other places, like Biscayne Bay, which has suffered repeated fish kills and other problems from excess polluted urban runoff. When building a rain garden, size depends on how much water you want to capture and depth depends on its distance from your home. Typically, the deepest part of a rain garden is about 8 inches. “If the garden is close to your house, it needs to be deeper. If it’s farther away, the water has space to spread out, which improves drainage and soil permeability,” she said.
It usually takes about two years for a rain garden to mature and effectively absorb water. Munroe recommends planting before the rainy season to give roots time to establish. Her favorite rain garden plant is the blue iris, though there are many native options available.
“All parts of the garden should be filled with plants and mulch,” she said. “Just don’t expect it to look perfect right away.”
Munroe noted that most homeowners can build one themselves for a few hundred dollars. However, if your yard has a slope greater than 12 degrees, it may be more and best to hire a professional.
Rain Barrels: A simple old timey addition that can capture runoff you can then use to water garden plants during dry spells. A 2,000-square-foot roof can collect around 1,000 gallons of rainwater during a storm, though the University of Florida doesn’t suggest using roof water to water any fruit and vegetables you plan to eat.
Miami-Dade offers a workshop to learn more about rain barrels. If you attend and purchase a rain barrel, the county offers a $50 rebate. Rain barrels come in different sizes and designs and range from $75 to $300.
Laurie Davis, a homeowner in Miami Beach, said said bought a 90-gallon barrel. “I’m hoping I can reuse and divert water coming off the gutters where the ground slopes back to our converted garage,” she said.
Raise your home … or maybe just one part
The future is going up: New homes in South Florida are already being built several feet higher off the ground over concerns about rising seas and more storm-driven flooding — an elevation change that is obvious anytime an older home is knocked down and a new one goes up.
Raising your home is the only flood-mitigation strategy currently recognized by insurance companies to significantly reduce premiums.
But for most homes, it’s a major undertaking and super expensive, ranging from tens of thousands or more depending on the size and construction design. The process involves lifting the entire structure off its foundation using jacks, which also requires homeowners to temporarily move out. But after Hurricane Milton last year, you could see the huge difference it made on one Port Charlotte street where a newly elevated home raised 13 feet largely escaped storm surge damage while an older home just around the corner was gutted and would likely need to be razed.
There are other options. Some homeowners choose to build an additional floor above and convert the ground level into a “floodable” space — essentially sacrificing the lower level during floods events while protecting the main living areas above.
For smaller-scale elevation, some also opt to raise the foundation by a few inches by adding a new concrete layer on top of the existing slab. This process involves drilling, leveling and installing stabilization bars. Antinelli cautions that’s not an ideal DIY project due to its complexity and potential for causing structural issues.
Tyler Smith of Alpha Foundations in Miami says his company avoids concrete topping layers, noting that the added weight can actually accelerate floor settling. Instead, they use a polyurethane foam injection method to fill gaps beneath the concrete. This technique can level uneven floors – and in some cases, even raise them by several inches – without adding significant weight.
Raising two 10’ x 10’ sections of garage floor that sunk two inches into the ground using the polyurethane injection method would cost around $800-$1200, Smith said.
When all else fails ...
Buy flood insurance! If it can rain, it can flood – and Antinelli considers it critical for South Florida homeowners to get federal flood insurance. Most homeowner policies do not cover flooding and the risk, as the Herald series Floods of Trouble found, is only going up. From disasters like Fort Lauderdale “rain bomb” in 2023 and increasingly wet hurricanes — extreme weather events that scientists say are only being made worse by climate change.
Ashley Miznazi is a climate change reporter for the Miami Herald funded by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation and MSC Cruises in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners.
This story was originally published by The Miami Herald and shared in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.
