Insurance aspestos help!

sallygreen30

Hello!

So I had a leak in my kitchen which ruined my kitchen flooring, after a big stressful insurance process, the end result is that old tiles from the 1940s found under the ruined floor, contain aspestos and need to be professionally removed. However, the company want to remove the visible tiles only and encapsulate the tiles under my kitchen worktops rather than remove those as they think my kitchen worktops would not survive. Personally I would rather have it all removed as I was planning on putting a new kitchen in in a few years and I don't want this to come up again when further works get done. Also, id like to be able to tell any buyer in the future than all aspestos has been removed. Also I feel the insurance company are just doing this so that they don't need to provide me with a new kitchen even though there was very slight water damage to the bottom of my kitchen units.

Where do I stand with asking for full removal of the aspestos tiles, even if it does ruin the kitchen? Why not just encapsulate the whole floor if this is an option atall?

Thanks!!

ACG

Are you wanting them to remove the floor and kitchen and replace them?

paddyandstumpy

Why do you expect the insurer to put you in a better position you were in pre loss?

They are doing what is necessary for the safety of their contractors, not what you want for your ease so you don't have to deal with it yourself when you change the kitchen.

sallygreen30

When I say new kitchen, I mean the bottom part that is damaged due to the water damage which my insurance covers.

cajef

sallygreen30 wrote: »

Also I feel the insurance company are just doing this so that they don't need to provide me with a new kitchen even though there was very slight water damage to the bottom of my kitchen units.

The insurance company will pay for the area of the water damaged asbestos tiles to be replaced not the complete floor or a new kitchen which you appear to want them to do.

sallygreen30

Perhaps I should've explained further


I'm covered for a whole new floor, aspestos removal and the drying process. They are a broker. The kitchen is quite old, although the bottom parts are all I would consider to be water damaged in terms of swelling, I now have mould inside my units and walls because the insurance company were incompetent and appointed wrong companies via sub contractors, delaying the entire drying process by over 2 months, and did not reply to any emails I sent to them over a 10 week period. Over 10 weeks of lying water in an older kitchen is not good. If they replace the bottom part of my kitchen, I doubt this will match the top older part... so I assume this would mean they would have to replace that too? It's not that I want to con them out of an entire new kitchen, I understand where the water damage damage is at the bottom but their slowness and bad customer service and inability to organise the drying and removal process, has contributed to the other issues caused by the original leak. Now they want to encapsulate under the kitchen, and remove the rest of the tiles, purposefully leaving the damaged units so they don't have to replace them...

agrinnall

As in cajef's post, the word is asbestos.

sallygreen30

Didn't realise it was a spelling competition

Andy_L

Ask them if you can pay the extra for the extra work

paddyandstumpy

They won't replace undamaged units just because they might not match with the new ones. They should offer a contribution towards them, but don't expect them to pay for them totally (unlesss you've got matching sets cover).

You're covered for damaged items where there has been an insured peril. I.e. Water has damaged some units and part of the floor. That's all they will replace, as that's all that's damaged.

Put in a complaint if you feel the handling of your claim has been poor.

Mungo76

As already mentioned if the base units are damaged as a result of the original water damage, then your entitlement will be the damaged items only, unless you have matching items/sets cover.

If you make noise about it the insurer will cover 50% of the undamaged items.

If the damage to the base units is as a result of the poor handling of the claim, you have a different argument as you would not be in this position had it been resolved as it should be.

Regarding the asbestos, I would be going back to the underwriter anyway, if your replacement entitlement under the policy is for the whole floor the whole area of asbestos needs to be removed.