Houston Resident Swears By AquaDam Product He Says Saved His Home From Flooding

HOUSTON, TX -- They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round, they all laughed when Edison recorded sound. And the all laughed at Randy Wagner when he decided to use some product called the AquaDam to protect his home from flooding.

Houston has been beset by torrential rains this season, prompting Wagner to go online to find a product to ward against high waters,KHOU-TV reported. The item he found while surfing the Internet is a like it sounds -- a makeshift mini-dam of sorts but made of rubber.

It's not cheap, either. Wagner said he paid a little over $8,000 for the item, and had to drive all the way to Louisiana to get it.

He was prompted to get an AquaDam as Brazos River Authority officials warned residents of an imminent deluge that was expected to trigger flooding of a sort they hadn't seen in decades.

Once home, he began to install the contraption with the help of some friends, filling up 400 feet worth of 30-inch plastic tubes with water. What the AquaDam amounted to was something that looks like a huge bicycle inner tube, and passersby would wander through and laugh at the furious construction, he recalled.

His neighbors, too, thought he was nuts, but he persevered in constructing the thing around his home.

And then he waited for the storm.

When the storm came, he and his family watched as nearly 30 inches was dumped onto the city, but relieved the water never crested over the huge tube that served as barrier around the home.

The AquaDam had worked.

“I was the crazy guy," Wagner told the television station. "Everybody was kinda going by, laughing at me. But today they are really impressed with this AquaDam.”

For more about the AquaDam, click here.

Read the full story at KHOU >>

>>> Image via AquaDam home page