Insurance Question

[puffernutter]

I have heard (maybe apocryphal) that even asking an insurance company a que stion can be considered a "claim" and yes, I need to read my policy (and sm all print!) but all that aside, your comments on the following please.

We have just had the ceiling in our utility room come down due to water ing ress. We live in Trowbridge, at the edges of some of this weather, but las t week and in particular last Friday was extremely wet and windy.

The roof in question is a pitched, tiled roof that we had replaced when we moved in some 14 years ago now (the surveyor said it had the wrong tiles fo r the pitch, so we had them changed). We are not certain if the felt was r eplaced at the time. Certainly the water ingress is due to holes in the fe lt (with no ceiling I can see the holes :-)

If we were to claim on the insurance, would they replace all the felt and r epair the ceiling, or would they call it "fair wear and tear" on the felt and I may be expected to contribute to the cost of removing all the tiles a nd replacing the felt?

The only damage we have is the ceiling (fortunately nothing was in the way when it came down).

Your thoughts please?

Cheers

Peter

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

You're meant to tell them that the loss has happened so they can, if needed, reassess the risk your property poses to them. Since rain/weather is such a problem at the moment I'm not sure that you have much to fear from that, but as I say, you have to tell them anyway. If you don't and they ever find out, they could refuse you cover, even if you've paid premiums, because you've not told them everything they need to know.

Whether you claim or not depends on the cost of claiming - balancing the cost of paying for all the repairs yourself and perhaps a higher premium, vv having them pay for the repair and probably even higher future premiums... It is possible to have a sane discusssion with an insurance company about this though, if you're lucky. A "loss adjuster", if they sent one to your house to assess the damage, might well decide that the company would only pay part of the cost of the full thorough repair though.

Are these little holes, caused eg by the nails that secured the old tiles? The new tiles' nails would presumably be in different places...

I think you'll have to ask.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , puffernutter escribió:

What the f*ck has insurance got to do with DIY? Could you really not be bothered to find a more appropriate group in which to ask?

[puffernutter]

uestion can be considered a "claim" and yes, I need to read my policy (and small print!) but all that aside, your comments on the following please.

ngress. We live in Trowbridge, at the edges of some of this weather, but l ast week and in particular last Friday was extremely wet and windy.

e moved in some 14 years ago now (the surveyor said it had the wrong tiles for the pitch, so we had them changed). We are not certain if the felt was replaced at the time. Certainly the water ingress is due to holes in the felt (with no ceiling I can see the holes :-)

repair the ceiling, or would they call it "fair wear and tear" on the fel t and I may be expected to contribute to the cost of removing all the tiles and replacing the felt?

y when it came down).

Jeremy, Thank you for the comments. I'll look into the Policy details. I assume a s we had three wooden windows and one old UPVC window replaced by modern uP VC (all like for like) I'd better tell them as well! I knew with cars you needed to keep them aware of any changes, I wasn't aware of that with house s, certainly nothing that materially affected the structure (we're just tal king about a plasterboard ceiling here.) I could remove all the tiles and refelt under. It would take me longer tha n a professional, but I reckon I am competent to do it.

Mike, As much as I hate feeding Trolls (and potty mouths).

Posters on here, by and large, are active DIYers. They may have had to mak e this decision in the past as to whether to repair themselves or go throug h the insurance route. I was interested in their experiences.

Regards

Peter

[stuart noble]

AIUI felt is not expected to be waterproof. Plenty of older houses don't have any. I guess it acts as a temporary cover so that tiling can be done at a later date? I had a claim for water ingress agreed in writing by an insurance company a few years back, but the loss adjuster subsequently threw it out (basically because it was going to cost more than they thought). I got some money via the ombudsman because of their u-turn but their final judgment said insurance companies are allowed to change their minds". Mine was an ex-gratia goodwill payment blah blah.

[Nightjar]

I would have thought the two were very closely related, given the DIY disaster programmes that keep appearing on TV.

uk.grumpy-old-men perhaps?

Colin Bignell

[John Williamson]

No, the water ingress is due to faulty tiling. If a tiled roof is properly done, the water shouldn't get anywhere near the felt, which is only there to reduce draughts. Unless the rain is blowing horizontally up the slope of a roof for many hours, the overlapping of well laid tiles or slates will keep the rain out of the roof space.

There are many rainproof roofs that I've seen with no felting.

[Roger Mills]

You need to be careful because most policies exclude gradual deterioration, and only cover damage caused by a single violent event. It would be easier in some ways if the roof had blown off in the gales!

How big are the holes in the felt, and what is likely to have caused them? Is the felt showing signs of rot? If so, you may find that your insurance company will pay for the ceiling but not for the roof repair.

Read the policy very carefully, and decide on what basis you wish to claim.

[Martin Brown]

What was the guarantee on the roofing work? Worth checking this!

I agree. Although a shallow pitched roof does require slightly more exotic tiles laid properly to ensure a good watertight roof.

The only exception being if some of the ridge tiles have been blown off by the wind or the valleys compromised. We had a spectacular selection of faults all develop simultaneously on our roof a couple of years back.

Our fundamental problem was a breach on a gulley high up but the felt underneath the tiles kept the kitchen from suffering until a bird built a nest on it and punctured the felt. Then a river flowed in.

The tiles being 100years old had gone like flakey pastry and turned to dust when you stood on them so it was time for a complete new roof.

Though most (even old build) have something underneath to stop ingress of powder snow at least up here in Yorkshire. When my roof was being replaced I was impressed at just how waterproof the new breathable membrane is - it got severely tested one night.

[puffernutter]

Thank you all for the comprehensive responses.Much appreciated. It was as I suspected in that as it was caused by "wear and tear" the root cause wont be covered.

It is a mono pitch (lean to) with flat overlapping concrete tiles. We've n ever had a problem before until last Friday when the wind and rain were par ticularly severe. I agree about the felt, my in-laws live in a Victorian te rrace and their slate roof has no felt. You can stand in their loft and se e daylight, but it doesn't leak!

The felt has broken (old age) adjacent to a batten, so I guess that maybe m ovement in the wind has stressed it until it has frayed.

We have spoken to our insurers and see what they say.

Cheers

Peter

[fred]

In article , Mike Tomlinson writes

I imagine he's trying to work out whether to claim or DIY it, sounds reasonable to me.

If your in the mood for a DIY on-topic punch up can I suggest Bill Wright's TOT thread for a contribution.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Nightjar writes

Rather tenuous.

ffs. If I'd wanted news.all, I'd use news.all.

OT posting is just lazy, Usenet is in decline partly because idiots can't be bothered to find the right group in which to post. If they did, those groups would be busier because people would see they are actually being used.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , fred writes

He's killfiled. His constant harping on about his perceived lefties in the BBC was getting really tedious.

[Brian Gaff]

Most odd. Our roof has no felt and does not let in water, so I'd suspect this is a red herring and the water actually came in some other way. Brian

[Harry Bloomfield]

Brian Gaff formulated the question :

I agree, we have no felt either, but have never had any ingress. I suspect the pitch or the tiles may be still wrong.

[Harry Bloomfield]

puffernutter explained :

Our main roof has red pot tile layout of three tile thickness, as a minimum at every place. The underside edges were originally grouted, but the grout was so poor it crumbles. You can see daylight in most places, if you look, but we have never had an ingress in any weather.

[Andrew Gabriel]

My parents had a very shallow loft roof extension tiled with the original tiles which had been on a 45 degree roof, and therefore not suitable for the shallow angle. What was done in this case is that some properly waterproof/weatherpoof layer was laid in place of the roofing felt (I didn't see it, but I'm told it was solid), and that is the weatherproof layer. The tiles are then largely treated as decorative rather than functional, and mean it latches the rest of the roof.

[Piers]

I think this is very unlikely. Especially as I believe the law recently changed to require insurance companies to explicitly ask you questions they wanted answers to, rather than put the onus on the client to declare anything possibly of interest.

[michael adams]

That's interesting. So presumably insurance companies will now need to send out lengthy questionaires for policy holders to fill in on a weekly basis, covering any change of circumstance that might effect the policy in question.

Or maybe instead to save costs, they could arrange for call centres to telephone policy holders every evening and go through a list of questions with them.

This all sounds like such a brilliant idea, I wonder why nobody ever thought of it before ?

michael adams

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[fred]

In article , Mike Tomlinson writes

Understandably but please consider taking him out of the bin occasionally and giving him a yank on his choke chain every now and again, it seems to be the only control mechanism he understands and it appears to have been effective in subduing his more offensive racially motivated rants.