Question: Why do you use sandbags to stop water?

Jed Ramsay answered on 20 Mar 2012:

As a basic rule of thumb, because they are cheap and widely available.

There a a lot of better methods for stopping water that last longer – water eventually seeps through sand. In Oxford we have some metal and plastic barriers that we put up during in a flood to protect certain parts of the city – these work a lot better than sandbags, but are expensive and need a lot of people to get them working in time.