Does home insurance cover blocked drains?

We’ve written about the various ways some unscrupulous drain companies can rip you off – the article is here in case you missed it – 8 Blocked Drain Scams (and how to avoid them). 

Another way contractors can take money from you unfairly is by doing work to fix problems that are already covered by your home or buildings insurance policy. 

For example, we recently received an enquiry from a homeowner in Loughborough, asking for a quote to repair a sewer drain that was blocked by tree roots.

Some drain companies would have happily quoted and then done the work – on the face of it everybody’s happy. But our response was different:

Thank you for your enquiry regarding the root ingress at the property. Firstly, I would suggest that you contact your buildings insurance as root ingress may be covered within your policy. 

We then went on to describe how we would do the work, and to provide an estimate of time and cost, should the customer not have been covered.

A few days later we received the following reply:

Many thanks for your kind and helpful reply. I'm super impressed. It hadn't occurred to us that our house insurance could cover this situation. I could see nothing about cover for drainage problems when I looked at our documents, but when I phoned the insurer I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we are covered!! Of course, they will send the company they use to investigate and repair. In fact, the appointment has already been made.
 
If anyone ever asks me about a drainage company, I'll tell them to contact you folk.

Does buildings insurance cover drains?

Most home buildings insurance policies will cover accidental damage to water and drainage pipes that serve the insured building if the pipes are the policyholder's responsibility. However, these policies often contain exclusions.

For example, some insurers may refuse to pay claims where the underground pipes are discovered to be made from pitch-fibre, a material used commonly in the 1950s and 1960s, but now regarded as inherently defective.

In the event of a blockage caused by roots, or broken drains which may have been caused by subsidence, we always recommend checking first to see if you are covered by your buildings insurance.

Honest, like buildings insurance, is the best policy

On the face of it, we lost out on maybe a £250 job from this enquiry. However, what we've gained is more valuable to us – a boost to our reputation as being a local company you can trust. We may or may not ever get any referral work from this customer, but that doesn’t matter – our reputation is most important to us. We're a local company who lives and works amongst the customers we serve. When we say we're a company you can trust that can't be an empty promise – we'd soon be found out if we were mistreating our customers.

If you have a drain problem and would like to be super impressed with our services, please give us a call on 01530 510 571, or contact us here. But check your buildings insurance first.

06 Dec 2018

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