Calgary’s new frontier in home flood protection is nearly three metres high with thick aluminum panels made watertight by commercial-grade silicone sealant.

This fortress-like perimeter on a riverside home in Elbow Park has concrete-reinforced steel beams that go 4.25 metres into the ground.

Twenty construction workers have spent weeks assembling it.

And around the end of next month, crews will dismantle the above-ground wall, put the panels in storage and reinstall them next flood season.

With any major mitigation measures for Calgary’s flood zones likely a couple years away, many homeowners have fortified their properties with new pump systems, more resilient building materials and even metre-high concrete barriers around the front yard.

But nothing comes close to the full metal wall encircling this house, drawing neighbour’s stares and passersby’s rubbernecking.

“It’s two feet above last year’s flood,” said Matt Kristiansen of Ethan Karter Construction.

His firm normally builds structures for businesses, never before for residential. But it could be the start of something, the contractor said.

“We’ve been asked to do this for a couple other people.”

It’s big. But it’s no eyesore, said Larry Horan, who lives a few doors down.

“Any more than the water that damaged the neighbourhood? No,” he said.

The great wall is protecting the home of Allan Markin, one of the city’s leading philanthropists and businessmen. Markin, a chemical engineer, was longtime chair of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and president of AMP Financial. He’s an owner of the Calgary Flames, runs a preventive health foundation and has donated to many Calgary charities, including $20 million to St. Mary’s University College.

The flood was a major part of his life last year, and not just because his main floor took on more than a metre of water.

Last summer, then-premier Alison Redford named Markin to lead the flood mitigation advisory panel. Last fall, the group recommended $830 million worth of measures to protect flood-zone Albertans, including a dry dam near Bragg Creek and an underground diversion channel out of Glenmore Reservoir to protect residents in the Elbow River valley.

The Alberta government has announced plans to proceed with the dam, and a water storage site near Springbank Road, while the feasibility Glenmore tunnel is still being studied by engineers.

But none of the projects have timelines on them, and homes on the flood plain will be vulnerable again for this summer and likely next.

Enter the massive temporary wall, which reaches just under three metres at its tallest point, where Markin’s property dips near the river.

It’s nearly a perfect square barrier, 38 metres long. The aluminum panels are more than a centimetre thick, forming a smooth wall in the inside with structural legs that jut out all around the outside.

Specially engineered for this home, the May-to-June structure is modelled on flood walls in Europe and the United States, Kristiansen said.

Markin declined through his project architect to speak to the Herald about his wall.

“The owner of the property wishes to remain a private citizen,” the architect said in a statement.

The city doesn’t allow standard fences at such height. This one required a special development permit, which is still working its way through the approval processes even though the fence is near completion.