a couple of home insurance questions (garage/extension and dvd's etc)

Nilrem

Hi

My mother has asked me to look into changing the insurance for our house, currently the Garage (separate 2½ car, fully wired) and extension aren't covered.

The garage was built about 15 years ago but never added to the insurance (it was only "fully" completed a few years ago when we replaced the roof and got wired up etc).

The extension wasn't covered because when my parents first bought the house the mortgage company (whom the insurance was with as a condition) believed it needed underpinning (a separate private inspection said otherwise - and it's lasted 30 years without any problems).

The situation is complicated by the fact we are officially in a "flood" area, but have a garden that is fairly long and at 2 primary heights, the lower garden (well back from the house) floods from time to time, but the upper garden (near the house) has never flooded (it would need to flood to a depth of about 5 feet to reach the backdoor).
Some of the neighbours houses have had problems with flooding in the past, but they are all much closer to the source of the flooding than us (about 30-40 feet and lower down), as do houses on the opposite side of the brook, due to them being built at a lower level than our lower garden (we can have less than half an inch of water in the bottom garden, whilst the newer houses on the other side are starting to flood*).

What my mum wants is for me to chase up insurance and make sure both are included on the new policy - does anyone have any hints as to how to do this?
Will we need to get them surveyed or anything?


Also on a related note both my brother and I have fairly large collections of DVD's and books, does anyone know what proof would be required to cover them under contents (and if they would need to be mentioned specifically?)
In my case the DVD collection is about 600+, and i've still got many of the receipts (although not all as some of the online retailers I used don't give a seperate receipt/invoice in the package, and purge older records after a few years).
In almost all cases i've got the email confirmation for the orders, and have them listed in a library/collection programme with the date/price/title (DVD profiler).



Thanks in advance



*The local council planning officers should be shot - it was a known flood plain, and they allowed houses to be built on a level that was known to flood every few years.

magicdamo1984

as far as i am aware all outbuildings are covered as standard on buildings cover unsure if living on a flood area makes a difference to this,
and with the dvd's and books the list you have should be alright but would would help if you took some pictures of them that should prove that you have as many as you say.