Leak from bathroom, how to fix and potentially claim

garden_birds

My bathroom is situated above my kitchen. I spotted localised water damage yesterday on the ceiling and wall of my kitchen which appeared during the day following use of the shower.

The position of the damage strongly suggests it is linked to the shower waste pipe, but I realise that water leaks can be hard to trace and I can't be certain that the shower is the cause.

I have home insurance with home emergency cover included. I would not class this as an emergency but having that cover may affect (improve?) my potential claim.

Outside of minor claims for home emergency before (whereby the insurance provider arranged for the professionals required to address the issue), I have not made a home insurance claim for buildings or contents cover.

My excess for water related claims is £450 and I believe the insurance may only cover tracing the leak and repairing the damage, not reparing the source of the leak.

The water damage so far is minimal and I could likely fix this myself.

I am unsure how much damage could be made in tracing the leak, although the potential sources of the leak are few and all located very close to each other.

I have seen some downsides to claiming for a similar issue captured in the post made in this forum called "claiming-on-insurance-for-leaking-shower" (I'm too new to post links!).

Checkatrade state that leak detection can cost between £80 - £1,600, with the avergage cost being around £500.

I am not sure this will be a complicated task given the location of the leak and how it (I think) relates to the use of the shower.

Please excuse my ignorance, but how would I approach handling this issue if I were to consider claiming on my insurance?

Do I organise for a tradesman to investigate the problem, book them in and pay them before claiming the costs back?

If that is the case, what evidence do I need to collect and what would I need from the tradesman?

Would I need them to itemised the cost for tracing the leak and reparing the source?

Or, do I need to decide upfront if this is worth a claim and first contact my insurance provider?

Any advice would be gratefully received!

Thanks.

Exodi

Think long and hard about contacting the insurer.

As you say, there is a £450 excess, and they will report it as a claim, regardless of whether they actually pay out any money.

What I mean by this is if, for example, you engage a tradesman who identifies the issue with relative ease and advises the fix is relatively inexpensive (or at least less than the excess), even if you were to abandon the claim and pay the plumber out of pocket, they'd still log it on the CUE database and you'd have to report it at future renewals.

As you also say, it only covers trace and access costs, not the actual repair.

As you can probably imagine, I speak from unfortunate experience on this. The second time I had a different leak (in some pipes in the ceiling) I cut the hole in the ceiling myself to inspect and located the leak, meaning the repair was ~£100 from the plumber (and then I had to repair the ceiling).

I'm just making the point that if you contact the insurer, there is no going back on it.

If you do contact the insurer, they will tell you what evidence you need from the tradesman.

garden_birds

Thanks for the quick response @Exod.

Understood, a claim would only be worthwhile if the cost to trace the leak and repair the damage was more than the excess (while also considering the increased premiums in future years).

In an ideal world I could get a plumber in to trace the leak and then claim that work on insurance if it turned out to be financially beneficial.

I get the feeling that this is not how home insurance works and if I did intend to make a claim, I would need to contact the insurance upfront before arranging any work?

I guess this may depend on my judgement of how easy it may be to locate and fix the problem?

MyRealNameToo

Check your policy to see if it includes "trace and access" or not... if it doesnt your insurance will only cover the resultant damage of the leak and nothing to do with finding the leak, stopping the leak or making good any damage done to so do. 

If its a pipe thats become disconnected then there is a reasonable chance its covered, assuming no recent work on it or anything else that may point to it being defective workmanship. If it's a case that grout or sealant has failed then thats likely not to be covered. 

The insurer most likely will want to see the cause of the leak, if possible, before it's fixed/made good but it all depends on if you have other ways of getting washed etc.

Do you have another shower or bath? If you do then Home Emergency will probably just tell you not to use the leaking one and not see it as an emergency. 

garden_birds

Thanks @MyRealNameTo.

We have a separate bath and running that does not seem to affect the water damage, nor does running out basin taps, and so I think it is isolated to the shower.

It wouldn't be classed as an emergency by the insurers.

I think the cover boils down to:

Trace and access: We’ll cover removing and replacing any part of the buildings to find the source of any water or oil escaping from tanks, pipes, appliances or fixed heating systems that is causing damage to the buildings.

And:

We don’t cover: Tanks, pipes, appliances or heating systems themselves.

With the excess being £450 for tracing and then repairing, but not fixing the source of the issue, I may take my chances with a plumber who can do everything.

My gut feeling is that the job may be too small to warrant a claim.

MyRealNameToo

Most the cost of the claim tends to be in repairing the resultant damage from the leak, though in some cases trace and access can get very expensive, think about £40k was the biggest one I've seen but then I never worked in Home Claims. 

It's worth also checking if you have full matching set cover or not as that also becomes problematic if tiles have to come off or the shower tray breaks etc. 

Given the EoW damage in this case appears minimal I'd probably get a plumber round for a view before contacting the insurer too.