Flash floods. Freak weather. Broken pipes. Backed up sewage. Any one of these catastrophes can strike your home without a moment’s warning, and they all threaten it with extensive water damage.
Saturated drywall and a leaking roof are both obvious types of water damage, but such damage doesn’t necessarily come all at once. Some of it is insidious, as water infiltration can gradually cause a home’s walls, flooring and even its foundation to rot and breed toxic mold.
According to the Insurance Information Institute, water damage and freezing alone accounted for nearly one-quarter of homeowners insurance losses in 2018. The average claim exceeded $10,000!
Naturally, you wish to avoid paying for the expensive repairs demanded by disasters, which is why you purchase homeowners insurance from an insurance provider like The Hoffman Agency. But you want to sleep easy at night, which is why you also want to know: Does homeowners insurance even cover water damage? Well, the answer depends on which type of insurance you have.
Water Damage Coverage Depends on Your Insurance Policy
Different insurance policies offer protection for different types of water damage. In general, a standard homeowners insurance policy does offer protection from burst pipes. It also protects from heavy rain and ice dams that may form on your roof. There is an underlying philosophy to the water damage covered by standard homeowners insurance: The water cannot have touched the ground before it infiltrated the home.
This means a homeowners policy does not necessarily cover every type of water damage. For example, it may omit damage resulting from water that has backed up into the home. This can happen when either the sump pump or the septic tank has failed. It is highly advisable to add this policy to your homeowner’s insurance if it is not already included. Sewer and drain backup insurance can cost as little as $50 per year. Plus, the damage it covers can easily amount to thousands of dollars.
Types of Insurance Coverage
Personal property coverage is also an important supplement to add to homeowners insurance. Valuable possessions including electronics, furniture and appliances can all quickly get destroyed by water damage. Not to mention, valuable can get ruined by a firefighter’s hose, in the event of a fire. Personal property coverage will essentially compensate for water damage to whatever is not “nailed down” in your home.
Flood insurance is not part of a standard homeowners policy. This omission makes sense, as many homes are under as much threat of flooding in Sioux City as they are a Viking invasion. But if your home is located in a known flooding zone, or could become flooded by a nearby body of water, then it is paramount that you add flood insurance to your homeowner’s policy. A single flood could conceivably cause damage equivalent to your entire home’s value! You may opt for flood coverage from your insurance provider. However, the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program also offers effective policies.
Protect Your Home and Your Savings with Homeowner’s Insurance in Sioux City
You have worked too hard and too long to entrust anything to chance when it comes to your home’s well-being. You want to make sure it is protected from all sources of damage – especially water damage. Water damage affects 14,000 Americans every single day.
Making sense of which types of homeowners insurance you need can quickly become complicated, as can avoiding paying for coverages that you can safely do without. If you want assistance to make certain your home is protected from water and any other kind of damage that could threaten it, then we welcome you to reach out to The Hoffman Agency today. We have helped countless people in Sioux City and throughout Iowa to protect their most valuable investments since 1964!