Sewage Flood Insurance Claim

rainybird

Just wondering if anyone know where I stand regards an insurance claim due to raw sewage flooding in to my garden & summer house.

On the 16th May this year a main drain in the street collapsed & all the sewage from the town flooded in to my garden...24 hours of raw sewage pumping out, a lot of sewage, not just dirty water but solids also.

The garden is 150 foot long & was over a foot deep in sewage, the summer house was standing in over a foot of sewage for over 24 hours.

My insurance company sent someone out to sanitize the summer house, they would not replace as it was an outdoor structure & was designed to get wet?? They advised me that they would be sending someone out to do swab tests in a few & if the bacteria levels were still high they would them replace the summer house.

8 weeks later swab tests were done & showed that the bacteria levels are double what is considered to be a safe level. We have not been able to use the garden or summer house all summer & it stills smells like a public loo.

11 weeks on my insurance company want to send someone out again to sanitize again. This means taking more time off work to wait in for people.

Do I have to put up with this? Surly they should now replace the summer house, that is what I pay my premiums for & after all they will be counter claiming from Severn Trent.

They say I have to give them the opportunity to repair.

Can they do this? isn't there some kind of time limit, after all we have lost the use of our garden all summer, we are unable to let the grandchildren play in the garden.

Any help would be much appreciated.

dacouch

Copy and paste the above post and post it onto the Insurance part of the MSE forum here http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=21