Home Insurance - pitch fibre pipe cover

kazca

I have a slightly tricky situation.

Bought a 1970 house about a year ago. Unfortunately it has come to my attention that the sewer drain is made of pitch fibre.

My current insurance company specifically excludes pitch fibre drains from its cover. Coming up to renewal and I am hoping to find a pitch fibre friendly insurance policy, if one still exists. Does anyone have any recent experience of a successful claim for pitch fibre drain failure.

Thanks

dacouch

Do yourself and get away from Halifax.

VictorM_2

Insurance companies generally don't cover for this as pitch file fails due to age very easily and your insurer is not there to maintain your house but rather insure you for any sudden and unforeseen event (of which failure of a pipe due to age is neither)m

In addition even if you do move insurer they would not cover you for something that happened before they insured you.

dacouch

VictorM wrote: »

Insurance companies generally don't cover for this as pitch file fails due to age very easily and your insurer is not there to maintain your house but rather insure you for any sudden and unforeseen event (of which failure of a pipe due to age is neither)m

In addition even if you do move insurer they would not cover you for something that happened before they insured you.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/pitch-fibre-pipes.html

VictorM_2

I am aware of that however the OP already knows about this:

Most policyholders will not know they have underground pipes made from pitch-fibre.!But there may be exceptional cases where an insurer can show that the policyholder ought reasonably to have realised the pipes were liable to fail – for example, because of a pre-emptive CCTV inspection, or because neighbouring pipes had already failed and the housing estate where the policyholder lives was generally known to contain defective (or potentially defective) pitch-fibre pipes.!

In these cases, the policyholder who does nothing to prevent the pipes from deteriorating or failing may be unable to show that the damage was unexpected when a blockage eventually occurs.

As usual however is would depend on the exact cause of damage and the policy wording.

kazca

Thanks for the replies.

The house was built in 1970 by the previous occupant. I was told about the pitch fibre pipe by a neighbour after I moved in and was previously oblivious to the existence of such a ridiculous product. Drainage pipes on the nearly estate, built in 1980, 10 years after my house had been replaced through insurance. Not sure of the details but having read up on pitch fibre pipe, it does appear that claims have been paid where the fibre pipe has failed and the Ombudsman would support these in a situation where the occupant was genuinely unaware of the pitch fibre pipe.

I would tend to agree that insurance companies should not have to pay for gradual degradation and eventual failure of these pipes but they clearly have done.