Damage caused by power cut. Insurance won't pay

huckster

Hold on a minute. If there was a power surge, which the houses consumer/fuse board did not deal with, why are there not other electrical appliances in the house affected. Have neighbours had any problems ?

I think the OP will have great difficulty in pursuing the electricity distribution company. The OP may need to obtain expert reports which are favourable. Before the OP pays for such reports, i think they should see what they can find out locally. If neighbours are reporting similar problems, then they can go to the electricity distibutor with full details. If other people have not had any problems, the OP should get an electrician out to find out why their homes system did not deal with a power surge.

It could just be a coincidence that the boilers circuit board has failed after the power cut.

[Deleted User]

To claim off someone else you would need to show negligence. It's not the electric companies fault that someone had an accident and it's probably not the car driver's fault either.

This is why you have your own insurance for. However, as you don't have accidental cover, your insurance company are quite right to turn your claim down. It's questionable that even if you did have accidental cover that an accident down the road would be connected to your boiler that and they would pay a claim.

As mentioned in the previous post, it's highly unlikely a disruption in the power would cause a failure. Circuit boards will generally fail if they are going to at the point you switch them on. If it's an older boiler get a quote and get it repaired, if it's a newer one it might still be under some sort of warranty?

vacheron

huckster wrote: »

Hold on a minute. If there was a power surge, which the houses consumer/fuse board did not deal with, why are there not other electrical appliances in the house affected. Have neighbours had any problems ?

I think the OP will have great difficulty in pursuing the electricity distribution company. The OP may need to obtain expert reports which are favourable. Before the OP pays for such reports, i think they should see what they can find out locally. If neighbours are reporting similar problems, then they can go to the electricity distibutor with full details. If other people have not had any problems, the OP should get an electrician out to find out why their homes system did not deal with a power surge.

It could just be a coincidence that the boilers circuit board has failed after the power cut.

A domestic electrical installation has no ability or requirement to suppress transient voltage surges. Domestic Consumer Units, RCD's, Circuit breakers and fuses are all designed to be slow operating and prevent against overload and earth fault conditions only.

All of these devices in a domestic consumer unit will happily allow surge currents of thousands of volts above the normal operating voltage to pass straight through with no resistance whatsoever.

The first line of defence in most homes is the equipment connected to the plug sockets / supply. Some will contain TVS, GDT or Transorb devices to shunt this energy to earth and protect the equipment. It is more likely that the cheaper or older equipment will fail than newer more expensive equipment.

Unfortunately many boiler circuit boards are cheap, badly designed 10-20 years old, and operate under cyclic thermal conditions which ages them prematurely. Hence these are often the first to go. (Set top boxes are also prime culprits).

This is not to say that this was definitely the cause. It very well could be a coincidence as you say, and, even if it was not, proving it would be almost impossible. The circuit board could have been at deaths door to begin with and could have failed by itself in the next few months regardless. Asking neighbours may clarify if this was indeed the case, but if that would lead to a successful claim is still doubtful. My original reply was just to explain that the voltage presented during a power cut -vs- an intentional local disconnection can be significantly different.

huckster

Thanks for the explanation.

From what i can recall, there was a power surge locally and after reports from a number of home owners the electricity supply companies they were with dealt with claims where they did not have Home Insurance. But this was quite a long time ago and getting companies to accept any liability these days is probably going to be very difficult.

FutureGirl

On your policy you are covered for certain things that damage the property IE theft, fire, storm, lightning etc.

The event you describe doesn't seem like it'd be covered under any of those insured events. So the insurers next option is to cover it under accidental damage - but you didn't take this out. So under your policy, there is nothing they can cover this under.

Do you have home emergency cover? That might cover this as they cover boilers etc.