Plumbing and Insurance Go Hand in Hand

In Fairfax, plumbing is sometimes undertaken in the context of some sort of accident or problem of one sort or another. This might get you wondering just what the insurance implications are. Read on for some important and interesting information.

The principles of home insurance

Broadly speaking, if you have a mortgage the lender will probably insist that you maintain full property cover at all times. That basically means for the building structure and typical risks such as some forms of natural disaster and fire etc. Note that not all policies will have the same interpretation of what ‘natural disaster’ means, so don’t make assumptions but read the policy carefully. Look particularly for exclusions – they might typically include flooding and landslides in their ranks.

The second generic type of cover relates to your property’s contents. Basically, that entails paying up in situations where your possessions are damaged by say a fire or stolen by a burglar. The third and final type of cover relates to third party liabilities. In other words, covering things like legal costs and court awards if you’re successfully sued by someone for damage to their property, or personal physical injury they incurred as a result of your property.

What’s this all to do with plumbing?

Some people assume that if they have a pipe or boiler problem that it will be covered by insurance. Well wherever you live, including Fairfax, plumbing issues may or may not be covered by your home type policies.

Let’s have a quick look at some of the issues:

1. Exclusions. Some policies might generically exclude flooding. While that might theoretically be related to natural floods, a flood caused by a domestic pipe problem might be a borderline definition.
2. Problems of your own making. Policies may have very different views about the relevance of the origin of the problem. For example, a boiler that catches fire due to an unforeseeable problem might be one thing; a boiler that does so because you tried to fix something and your repair failed, well, that’s likely to be something very different for an insurer.
3. Non-professional installations. Some parts of your domestic pipe infrastructure might be covered for accidents (though they might not be) but you may invalidate that cover in circumstances where you have used non-registered people, including yourself, to install new components of it. Professional warranties might be required.
4. Care and maintenance. If you suffer problems due to leaks following a big freeze, some insurers might not be interested if your pipework wasn’t lagged or otherwise insulated and protected.
5. Codes. Remember that policies containing specifications about professional work and code compliance might do nothing for you if something you’ve done yourself and not to code standard has gone wrong and resulted in damage to a neighbor’s property.

The thing to keep in mind is that insurance, philosophically, exists to protect you against circumstances you could not reasonably have seen coming or done much to avoid. In general terms, it’s not really there to cover you against the consequences of making a botched job of something that subsequently results in disaster for your property or someone else’s.

So, the bottom line is clear. It doesn’t matter where you are, including Fairfax, plumbing problems might not always be covered by your insurance. The only way to be sure is to read your cover carefully (sadly, many people don’t) and if in doubt, ask specific questions of your insurance provider in Fairfax. Plumbing and insurance go hand in hand – but it pays to know the ramifications.

Sarah Saadoun works for HMS Plumbing, a family-owned business in Manassas, Northern Virginia. If you need Fairfax plumbing services, Herve and his dedicated employees at HMS are proud to be serving the plumbing needs of Northern Virginia residents and businesses. For a reliable Fairfax plumber HMS Plumbing is your first choice.

Writer and Online Marketing Manager in London.