Water Damage Insurance Claim Tips
Water damage is a common claim filed by homeowners year after year. Each year landlords or renters file water damage claims. Many water damage claims come under homeowners insurance policies.
Water knows no boundaries and can sneak into your home in many forms. According to the Insurance Services Office, water damage is the second most common cause of home insurance claims after hail and wind damage.
You can rarely predict an inconvenience like water damage. It usually comes unexpectedly and leaves an entire mess, including destroyed parts of your home estate.
Imagine your basement has a tiny pond after you return from vacation. The house has exploded, flooded, leaked, or drowned. What would be your first reaction? Fright. The second step: How to get water damage insurance?
Let us look below at the most common water damage claims and seven crucial tips to help you deal with these claims.
Some Common Types of Water Damage Are-
Prevention is the initial step to securing your home from damage. Some are entirely unpredicted. However, flooding is the most common and frequent type of water damage evident every rainy season.
Despite a natural catastrophe, you cannot claim home insurance for flooding. Instead, you can get flood insurance to protect your finances, home, interior, belongings, and furniture in the future.
Apart from flooding, many other water damages come under the home insurance policy. Things such as the home structure and belongings get secured through insurance.
In addition, if flooding temporarily forces you to move out of your house, loss of use insurance will help you compensate for the additional costs you face. The following examples are among the most frequent water damage insurance claims filed every year.
Flood:
When damage occurs by water coming from natural sources, like excessive rain or river overflow, termed flooding, you can get flood insurance in this case.
Sewer and Water Backup:
Overflow by dirty water coming out of your sewer or drainage system. The reason may be an old sewer system, tree roots near the sewer, sewer system sanitary problems, etc.
Melting Snow:
Incidents occur due to excessive ice or snow, which causes roof collapse or freezing in pipes. It may lead to broken pipes, weakening the walls or foundations, leaking roofs, etc.
Some Accidental Discharges:
Damage comes from water overflow through home plumbing or appliances, such as pipes, clogged toilets, bathtubs, water outlets, or washing machines.
Water Damage Insurance Tips
Stop The Water From Flowing:
The first step is to identify the source from where the water is coming. It would be easier to stop the water from flowing by shutting off the water source. It could be anything like appliances, a sink, pipes, or a toilet. You can control the water from flowing to prevent the damage as much as possible.
Quickly File a Claim:
After encountering the water damage, make an insurance claim for your home. If the water damage is occurred due to flooding, you will have to claim the flood insurance company.
Whatever you decide to do, you must file an initial claim as it will help you work for the claim with your insurance provider. Keep in mind that they might have faced many similar kinds of claims, especially; due to an intense rainstorm or melting snow, or flooding. So they will most likely be taking the basis of first-come-first-served.
The sooner you submit a claim faster an adjuster can assess the damages, and the quicker you will get a check for the repairs to make your life back to normal.
Move Undamaged Items From The Damaged Area:
When you file a claim, you will need to get any belongings that are not damaged out of the way to ensure you do not have more hassle than you have to. If you are filing a flood loss claim, there is likely a fair chance you will have damaged or damaged items. Therefore, salvaging the undamaged items that are not damaged before the water gets to them will reduce your claim and the stress.
Moving damaged items away from suffered spot lets you see the damaged items and not damaged. Objects near water damage will likely require repair or replacement, even if there is minor water damage.
Take a Record of All the Damages:
When the water damage claim is submitted, the next thing you need to do is document all damages by taking photographs and videos. You should record the standing water and each item affected by water.
While it can be hard to know the extent of damage caused by the water taking pictures of everything will help you ensure that you can refutal any damage during the claim process.
If you have a complete home contents list established will help you to identify more precisely the items you own, what you spent on them, and their value. It is essentially a list of the things you have purchased and the amount you bought them for and photos of the objects, in case you own them.
Drain Standing Water:
Standing water can cause more damage to your home. After documenting, you will need to drain out the standing water. It helps avoid further damage like water leaking into the walls and floors and spreading across the wood and flooring.
Dry The Damaged Area:
After draining the water, the remaining moisture may damage your floor and walls. If you have rugs or carpets on the floor, it is vital to dry them out. Place the fans into the corners of the room to dry them. It will also prevent the growth of fungus or molds.
If you do not drain the remaining water on time, your furniture, walls, and floors are prone to be soaked when you have carpeting. To dry out areas damaged by water, raise some corners of the carpet and then place fans throughout the room in order to dry out the affected area.
Drying the area will resist the growth of mold. The final thing you want to do following the filing of an insurance claim for water damage is to see black mold grow across the affected area. You will then need to file a second insurance claim on your home for the removal of mold.
Keep All The Damaged Items:
After drying the damaged area, you should keep all your water-damaged items until the insurance adjuster has not yet examined them and assess how many claims you’ll get to repair or replace the distorted items.
Begin the Recovery Process
Unless the walls or roof has been severely damaged and lets water into your home, it is best to put off doing any repairs until you permit them to do it by your insurance company.
The delay in getting their approval reduces the possibility of making repairs not mentioned in the claim. However, if you experience any signs of leaks from walls or roofs, it is ideal to set up a tarp or some plywood to protect against water damage.
© 2022 Vinod Bansal
