Got Water Damage? Here's how to avoid a denial.

9/18/2019 (Permalink)

Do you have water damage at your Western Mass home? Did you know that you will almost certainly have insurance for the water damage, decontamination of materials and drying equipment necessary to dry your house. You should also have coverage for any mold damage, mold testing, mold clearance testing or mold removal necessary to decontaminate any affected materials. Finally, your policy should pay for the water damage restoration or water damage reconstruction that will return your house to its original condition.

All of this is true, unless, you make one simple mistake. You call your water damage a FLOOD! In the real world, when have water in your house, you call it flood damage. In insurance land, a flood is water that comes in from the outside or your structure not the inside (pipe leak, washing machine overflow, sewer backup, septic tank backup, air condition overflow, tub overflow or roof leak). For example, the creek overflows its banks or a hurricane dumps 20" of rain and water rushes in from the outside of your house. No homeowners insurance policies cover flood damage. Flood damage  coverage in the United States is run by the National Flood Insurance Program. Claims are often reported directly to them although they will sometimes use local insurance companies to receive the calls and inspect the claims for them for a fee.

The important thing to remember is that if you report you water damage as a flood your loss will get denied and you will receive no coverage