Quick Dams products of flood and water management snagged me in my tour of The National Hardware Show. Perhaps you saw the segment in my video. These are not tools per se, but some things that I think contractors might find useful.
First, the company has a wide variety of different products, and the more I thought about it, the more I pictured people racing to the big box for OSB before another gusher threatened to flood them out—and I thought about the contractors those people must call with no time to spare, begging to have their house hardened.
I don’t keep an inventory of filled sandbags. Or unfilled ones. Or sand. And I bet you don’t either. But the Quick Dams “sand bags”—which cannot be used in contact with saltwater—can block fresh water. Dry, they’re small and they are sold in 2-, 4-, 20-, and 120-piece packs. Upon getting wet, the chemical in them expands, absorbing four gallons of water in 10 minutes to form a 12-by-24-by-3 ½-inch-high “sand” bag. They take a long time to dry, but they do, and they’re reusable. These also come packaged as a $300 Emergency Kit with a free solar lantern charger.
The company’s $600 Floodgate seals off entry doors up to 26 inches high. These do not work like Pampers, so saltwater is OK. A mechanical armature telescopes the unit, squishing its neoprene gasket into the door jamb legs and threshold, and makes a tight seal on openings from 30 to 50 inches wide. Used with another Quick Dams product, they can be daisy-chained to seal off something like a larger opening, say for a storefront or driveway.
Finally, the $75 leak diverter. For post-storm recovery—or just while you diagnose a leak in regular life—this "upside down tent with a hole for a hose"—affixes to the ceiling and can collect water way better than pots and pans until you can get up on the roof and effect repairs.
The company has other products too that might just be worth keeping on the truck the next time someone calls you about a leaking water heater or other oddball water problem.
