How Is Your Home Protected Against Water Damage?
If you own a home, you may have concerns about how it will be protected with homeowners insurance in various situations. One of these includes if water were to cause a lot of damage to your home. While you may assume that this type of damage is covered, it may not be if you do not have the right policy in place. That's because water damage coverage is often based on how the water enters your home, rather than the damage it causes. Here is what you need to know about protecting your home from water damage.
Standard Home Insurance Coverage
There is the standard home insurance coverage that you can purchase, which is required if you are buying a home with a mortgage. This covers a wide range of the most common ways that water can get into your home, which helps pay for the repairs necessary to get your home back to how it once was.
One frequent way that people use this coverage is if they have a burst pipe in their home. This can happen due to the pipe being old in age and simply cracking, or from water freezing within the pipe and causing it to burst from expanding ice. In either of these situations, the damage was not intentionally caused and would be covered by standard homeowners insurance.
Another protection you have is if you were to have a roof leak. If a storm came through and caused damage to your home where water got inside, then the roof and the water damage would be covered. However, your policy may have exclusions for water damage caused by neglect, which includes not replacing an old roof that is failing.
Sewer Backup Insurance Coverage
The other way that water can get into your home is through a sewer backup. This can happen if you were to have a sump pump that fails during a big storm, and water now comes into your basement or crawl space through the sump pit filling up with water. You can also have a problem where water gets in through drains, due to the city sewer or septic tank filling up with wastewater and finding a way into your home. Sewer backup coverage has you protected in these situations.
Flood Insurance Coverage
Many people think of a flood as when water from a nearby body of water ends up flooding your area and submerging your house in water. However, flooding is defined as any time water enters your dwelling from the outside. That doesn't have to be a major flood but can even include rainwater that rises from the street and enters a window well. Flood insurance covers these instances, even if you do not live in a FEMA-designated flood zone.
Contact an agent to learn more about homeowners insurance.
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