How much is my house insurance likely to increase after making a water claim?

firestorm

We noticed a leak in our sitting room ceiling. Plumber took a quick look & gave a quote for insurance of £950. This may be lower, but impossible to tell until they can fit us in to start the job, which will involve cutting a hole in the ceiling & locating & fixing the problem from underneath. My concern is how much it is likely to increase our premium & should it end up costing less than the quote, is it worth claiming, given that our excess is £450? I notified the insurer & they said to come back to them if we wish to proceed once we have the quote, but I'm unsure due to the level of our excess. What is the price hike likely to be should I make a claim on this? I have never made a claim before. Thanks.

Sandtree

First of all, read your policybook to see whats covered... do you have trace and access cover? Certainly repairing the leak itself won't be. Repairing the resultant damage from the waterleak is likely to be assuming its coming from a fixed water system rather than failed seal around a shower tray etc.

With a single value quote it'll be potentially hard to work out the claimable amount if for example you are only covered for the resultant damage. 

As to price increase? Escape of water and Accidental Damage are two of the worse impacts on premiums short of catastrophic losses from flood or subsidence. The only real thing you can do is a dummy quote on an aggregator without the claim and then again with the claim and noting the percentage change and then factoring it will impact for 3-5 years but on a decreasing basis. 

firestorm

Great idea about the dummy quote. May have to do that. The insurer did tell me they'd only pay for damage, not replacement parts etc. Its not a massive amount of damage visible from underneath, but more damage will be caused by having to cut into & make good the ceiling & could be worse once that is done & the full extent visible. Would cutting into & making good the ceiling count towards the damage caused do you know?

Sandtree

Trace and access cover is required to cover the investigatory work... things get a bit muddled on the making good if you dont have trace and access but the investigation work only causes modest damage in the area of the water damage anyway

firestorm

Thanks Sandtree. Trace & access is covered up to £5000 luckily. Have spoken to the plumber & we are going to see what he thinks once he's opened up the ceiling to see what is going on. 

eddddy

Presumably the plumber had a look around upstairs to look for possible causes - before deciding to cut into the ceiling. Has he/she taken a look at sealant around showers, bath wastepipes etc.

Are there clues like the leak getting worse after the shower is used, or when it rains. Is your central heating system losing pressure?

Are you in a flat, or does the upstairs belong to you? Can floorboards be lifted upstairs instead?

(With some plumbers, if they think it's going to be an insurance job - they might be tempted to make it a bigger job than it really needs to be.)


Also, there are specialist leak detection companies who might be able to trace the leak without needing to do so much damage to the ceiling. They do things like:

• Test the composition of the leaked water to see if it's rain water, clean tap water, central heating water, sewage water etc

• Pour UV dyed water down the bath plughole, shower plughole, over the shower sealant - to see if the relevant UV dyed water appears in the leak area.

• Pump a gas into your water pipes, then use sensitive microphones to listen for hissing as the gas escapes from a hole in a hidden pipe

• Use endoscope/keyhole cameras - i.e. drill a small hole in the ceiling and push a flexible 'snake' through with a video camera on the end.

I believe these companies are expensive, but it might still be cheaper than putting up a new ceiling. And some of them claim they don't charge you, if they can't find the source of the leak.

But TBH, I only know one person who's used one of these companies - but they were very happy with the results.