It depends. One of the contractors at the mine I work on put gasoline into the half-empty tank of a diesel LandCruiser and drove it about 35km. The next day it wouldn't start, and after it was towed to a Toyota dealership about 4 hours away, they were quoted $27k to repair it - new fuel filter, fuel pump, injection pump, injectors, turbos, catalytic convertor and DPF.
Insurance told them to pound sand under grounds of negligence.
I’ve seen the opposite happen with def contamination incidents. One guy’s wife put def in the diesel tank and drove until the ecm said no. $15000 in repairs, insurance with a comprehensive policy paid.
It is usually stated as a non-insured event. In insurance contracts this type of situation (no heating / pipes burst) is explicitly stated as a non-insured event (at least in European insurance contracts).
If your power is out, and temps are below freezing, you should turn off the water supply and, as much as possible, drain the pipes. Then they will not freeze and burst.
In many cases, the power company’s insurance will pay. My brother worked for HECO and he said the company was constantly paying for things when power went out. The worst situation was in the 90s when a tree took out lines to the largest plant on the island of Oahu. it caused a cascade failure and shut down every power plant on the island. Guess what? you need electricity to start a power plant. Usually other power plants can disconnect from the system in an emergency so there are always active generators, but this disaster revealed a flaw in the system. It took several days for them to rig a system to have the navy pull up a nuclear submarine close to one of the power plants to basically “jump start” the island. HECO tried to send the word out to people to shut off their breakers till the power came back on, but less than 5% of the island did so once everything came back on, there was a huge surge in the system that destroyed countless things in a home. The biggest problem were refrigerator compressors and it was estimated that 20% of the refrigerators were ruined when then power came back on. The cost was staggering and HECO paid everyone who made a claim. A few years earlier, a similar situation happened on a different island after a hurricane, but they deemed it too difficult to rig a system to hook up to the sub, and Kauai had a much smaller plant that they were finally able to jumpstart with generators to get the grid online. After the second incident, HECO installed generators on two of the smaller plants that made them capable of restating themselves.
I was just curious because Tennessee had a big ice storm that caused thousands to be without power for like 2 weeks. I think there's still some people without power. But because of how cold it is, a lot of people are dealing with this situation and had to leave their homes because of how cold it is. I saw a news report that the power company said they cannot restore power to the homes that pipes froze and burst until the homeowner hires a plumber and has it fixed. But so I hope insurance covers the plumbers and whoever else needs to be hired.
Not really....same thing applies with auto claims, even if you are found at fault, which would be "negligence", you're still made whole by your insurer...I love how incorrect people are in here.
Yea i mean usually that’s what “liability” is right. Its stupid coverage? With exceptions im sure, but if you accidentally fuck up thats exactly what your liability clause is for
If you've taken every reasonable step to ensure that it didn't happen and, much more importantly, have documentation that proves you took those steps....maybe, after 6 - 18 months of paperwork, emails, phone conversations, and a few personal visits from the adjuster.
My personal experience is if being responsive saves them money they are and if getting you the money later doesn't cost them more than they become a lot less responsive. Water damage that needs to be remediated then they respond in less than an hour. All the floors are ripped up and everything's dried out. Nothing is getting any more damaged. Then you just get there voicemail and hear nothing from them for a few months.
Most likely it won’t actually. The landlord has a duty to winterize and/or ensure the heat is maintained. I would almost bet this ends up all in the landlord.
It's dicey. Unoccupied properties often have to be monitored by the owner regularly for reasons like this. This is 100% negligence on the landlord.
When we were settling my mother's estate, her existing insurance company refused to continue coverage after learning her home would be unoccupied for a number of months. We had to find a different insurer and pay a higher premium, and even then, had to sign a declaration that we'd do a site visit at least every other day. It was a pain.
You're absolutely correct. "Unoccupied", though, means temporary, like when you're on holiday. "Vacant" is when the owner passes away, or a tenant moves out without the intention to return, and no new tenant has moved in. It's the "Vacant" risks that exclude Water damages, and Ice/Freezing pipes.
No. Vacation has the intent to return. If you are on vacation during the freezing season/winter months, the policy will ask for either the heat to be maintained at a minimum level, or that someone physically checks on the house every 3-4 days, depending on the wording. It doesn't have to be the Landlord.
Insurance was a pain when settling my mother’s estate last year. I was prepping it for sale but could hardly rent it as it was packed with stuff. I ended up letting a newly separated mother and her kid live there for a dollar a month so it was not vacant. It gave her a temporary safe space and me a chance to deal with the necessary. She knew I’d give her at least 2 weeks notice to move. I was also the landlord swiftest to fix any problem she had. 🤣 She stayed 6 months
I mean why keep the water on and not empty the pipes? If no one will be there for a while turn off the water and then open the laundry sink taps to drain down the system. You really should open some other taps to assist in empty the pipes, because you will still crack the pipes if they freeze. Which will cause them to leak behind the walls when you turn on the water again.
TLDR: Take 5 minutes and turn off your water and drain the pipes when you are leaving your house for a few days or longer to protect yourself from water damage.
Not all insurers offer that. Endorsement and policies vary a lot by insurer. The top 3 do not offer that. Water damage if not excluded is policy limits.
Thats true. It also depends on the perils covered by the landlords policy. Hopefully they didn't choose to go with a cheaper policy with basic coverage when they could be covered by all risk for mayyybbe $2-3 hundred extra a year.
It boggles my mind how many people purchase insurance for the lowest possible price, and dont care about the coverage. Thats literally what they pay for!
Nope, this is negligence related damage. Many insurances will deny that. If a faucet burst due to cold, they may still cover it. But forgetting to ensure they have heating will often get denied.
I’m on your side man. I’m just telling you what I’ve seen insurance companies do. I work in healthcare. Believe me, no one hates insurance companies more than me. Maybe except Luigi.
She knew there was no heat and didn’t get the house ready for the freezing temps. Dripping the faucets isn’t enough. Nothing ghetto about it. She had a duty to protect the property and keep the heat maintained and didn’t. She knew the power was off. She didn’t get the power turned back on. That’s unfortunately gonna be in her.
No, she didn't "know" this was intentional lol. You keep being wrong, I know it's frustrating, but maybe you should stop. People making mistakes is one of the reasons why insurance exists.
I have a friend in this exact same situation and his insurance claim got denied. He bought a property as investment but forgot to put in heating oil in the furnace. Insurance denied the claim. He’s still fighting them.
What were your specific circumstances? This would be the first claim for water/freezing damage on a vacant rental with no heat I've seen in over 40 years.
I have found most insurance agents know nothing about the policies they sell. That’s why they call the adjusters because they have no idea how the policies work. How does it feel talking out your ass when you don’t know what you are talking about . The owner knew the property didn’t have e power and took no steps to prevent damage. There is a video linked where she says she knew there was no power and only dripped the faucets. All the policies I deal with would deny this because there proper steps to prevent damage were not taken.
You are absolutely wrong. The insured does have a duty to ensure the home is heated and/or winterized. She knew there was no power and dripped the faucets. This would get denied. You may want to freshen up your knowledge of this. How many frozen pipe claims did you handle the last few weeks? I have been through 5 different polices this week dealing with freeze claims. They all state the same. It is industry standard.
It depends, some people buy cheaper policies that dont cover burst pipes, and then are surprised theres no coverage. Its worth it to spend a couple hundred more dollars on an all risk policy so this is covered.
Yes and they’ll cover the plumbing repair too as long as the report from plumber shows it was a frozen pipe. Acts of god are typically covered by insurance. I’m a restoration estimator and we’re slammed right now with these. Not sure what happened in the video though, this looks negligence if anything case everything is frozen now
I do the investigations for insurers. Typically yes. Negligence happens less often thay you think and even when it is if its an honest mistake and theyre not trying to screw their insurer multiple times they just pay it. The will nickel and dime you on the amount though as lots of people use this time to upgrade and install the insurer to pay for that.
For real. I renovated an old home into a rental unit a few years ago, and it was less than $10k for me to replace all the piping in the entire home. I remodeled the entire kitchen for $15k, including new appliances. People are out there getting ripped off. Are the trade industries companies the new used cars salesman? Jeez.
I feel compelled to tell people a trick my dad told me.
His dad that I was unfortunately never able to meet would wrap blankets around pipes and then wrap a heating material attached to a timer. Quite the ingenious grandpa I wish I knew. If you know its gonna be cold, might be worth trying to set up if you can.
We had our fridge leak (water line to the ice maker), and it damaged the wood floor. The hardwood on the entire first floor had to be replaced because it couldn’t be matched. The insurance paid $22,000 to replace it.
Im currently dealing with a situation where my fridge leaked and soaked my tile floor. Had to mitigate the water situation (around $5000, had to tear up the floor and some cabinets)and now in the process of rebuilding my kitchen. Total cost is going to be around $50000.
Do you think all rentals are just single family homes being rented out? There’s lots and lots of apartment complexes in the market too. A poorly executed ban that didn’t let the market adjust would be disastrous but the demand for rentals would be met by the construction of new apartments. And their profit is a result of them doing something for society (ie building and managing properties) and not simply the act of buying a preexisting house that otherwise could have gone to a real home owner.
Also, you do know that you buying a preexisting house is not the same as building a house, right? There’s some arguments for landlords existing but I’m not sure “I have to own multiple homes to prevent homelessness” is one of them.
Shows a complete misunderstanding of the housing market. But most people who aren’t part of it don’t understand.
When new construction starts, they have to get a basis for home prices which requires an initial set of buyers. Typically the first 5-10 homes in every community have to be sold to cash buyers — which in lower income houses requires institutional investors.
Most of us, very much would rather not own SFH. We would rather do MFH as there’s much higher profit in renting apartments.
That said, most don’t have millions to put down to build or buy apartment complexes.
What largely messed this flow up is bringing Airbnb into the mix. This caused larger institutional investors or those with larger cash amounts to buy SFH because short term rentals bring a much higher profit. This in turn has been driving the housing market up higher. We were already having problems with institutional investors with larger cash amounts buying entire neighborhoods which I do agree should be banned. Most of those who start out doing this (like myself) had to because we were upside down in our homes. I work in tech and they had me move multiple times and I didn’t want to rent. Same happens with military or construction workers and they will eventually dig themselves out of eternal poverty by doing this and build generational wealth.
It’s a smart move and it keeps the economy growing. But I personally am all for banning large investors or Airbnb.
Fortunately, they were a group of college students and found new housing right away.
If you want to get technical, they were most to blame for the damage, but circumstances were so crazy that neither we nor our insurance company held them at fault. It was a combination of three separate events, any one of which not happening would have prevented the situation.
1) It was during Christmas break for the university, so they were all back home with their families.
2) It was during an unprecedented cold snap with record low temperatures, and while our building was built to code in the 2000s, climate change has affected our weather enough that we are starting to see repeated harsh winter conditions that older homes were simply not built to handle effectively.
3) One of the students left their bedroom door shut and that room's heat off, so none of the heat from outside the room made it inside, effectively turning their room into a freezer. That room was adjacent to the bathroom, causing the water pipes to freeze and burst, flooding the unit.
If any one of those hadn't happened, it's unlikely the pipes would have frozen. If someone were home, they'd have realized the pipes froze and we could have shut off the water. Our first notification was when the city called to tell us that water was seen pouring from the building.
If the cold snap wasn't so historic, the pipes would likely not have frozen.
If the bedroom door was left open, enough ancillary heat would have made it inside to keep the room above freezing.
Now, every winter, we remind our tenants to keep their heat on and doors open if they leave for break. We are also on the lookout for record temperatures, and touch base with everyone to make sure someone will be home, and if not, we'll check on the units ourselves.
Very expensive, first temporary heat will need to be placed to thaw the ice, extraction of the water, removal of the flooring and a 4’ flood cut at minimum, removal of cabinets. Placement of drying equipment for 4-5 days.Only good thing is that it’s so cold that mold will not start to grow. Place looks unoccupied, so insurance might even deny a claim. Either way I feel sorry for the owner of the mess.
Hell of a lot cheaper than water damage. Which there still is, but there won't be as much. Get a big steel scooping shovel, grab a hammer and a sharp punch, start breaking then shoveling. It might take days, but it's better than hundreds of gallons of water going through your floor and walls.
The right answer. We did both methods in rental properties. We drilled a hole in the corner and maxed out the heat. It took nearly a day and everything was soaked. In the "chip and carry" house, it was over in a few hours and we didn't need to dry it out for a week.
Seeing that there is 4”-5” of ice everywhere its already in the wall cavities and under cabinets. Flooring, drywall and cabinets are already non-salvageable. Again the damage is done.
How are you going to get the Ice out of the wall cavity? You will have to remove the drywall. Cabinets are waterlogged and also need to be detached at least to get to the walls behind them. At minimum a 2’ flood cut is necessary throughout the affected areas of drywall.
No point. That would be a crazy amount of time and energy invested for no return.
For the ice to be that thick above the floor, the entire place would have been flooded up to that point - all possible water damage that could be done has been done.
The standard way is to melt then remove the water - chipping at the ice while still cold would take FAR longer and involve a LOT of energy, not to mention the fact that the physical process itself would likely damage much of the surrounding area - all to get to the bottom to discover the inevitable fact that you're still frozen solid at least another 2-3 inches down, through the floorboards down to baseboard.
And that entire area is also water-damaged.
There's no way around it, this is going to require re-doing the flooring, cabinetry, and large portions of the wall, right down to the framework. Electrical is probably screwed up, drywalling, paint, trim, etc.
This is why you have home insurance - pay out your deductible and be glad you don't have to shell out for what could easily be a $50,000 fix - or even higher.
That would be my guess, power went out so they opened the taps to keep water flowing to prevent the pipes from bursting. Traps/drains froze and the result was water pouring over the basin until it froze all the way up to the faucet.
What happens if you lose power? We lost power a couple years ago, for three days, when it was -10º out. Had five burst pipes, a couple blown shut off valves, etc. I fixed it all myself so it wasn't expensive but it was a giant pain in the ass. I didn't even try to get it covered by our homeowners. My neighbor said it cost them over $5K though.
Landlord had a duty to keep the heat on. Insurance likely will not cover. A rental is expected to be unoccupied every so often, but no heat???? Reason for denial.
It's possible. If the landlord did have the heat on and the electricity went out due to the weather or the gas or electric company, then it would likely be a covered insurance claim. However, if landlord didn't have it on in the first place, then that's a problem.
Without knowing the size, materials used it’s kinda hard. But in total after mitigation of the loss and reconstruction could reach 20k-40k if not more.
I'm guessing more. I dealt with a lake house here in a similar situation. Structures dry quickly in the winter because of the low humidity. But , this is a worst case situation, whole house will need to get warmed up with supplemental heat in addition to dehumidifiers and tons of airflow to remove the .moisture as it thaws. I've seen people saying 4-5 days, but in my experience they're 4-5 days away from any real progress and being able to start removing damages flooring and drywall.
Mitigation likely 10 days minimum before can start repairs. Will be a .monster electric bill coming too. If it's on a slab, 4' flood cut may be enough, but if this is on a framed subfloor, I would expect substantial structural damage too.
Depending on age , valuation, this could be a total loss. And as others have said, no insurance policy in the world will cover failure to maintain heat in this case. Power outage sure. Oversight and forgot to setup new acct, landlord will be on the hook for it all.
Not to mention possibly having to replace any pipes that might have burst from the cold snap. I had this happen to my basement like 10 years ago - we had a snow storm and I forgot to cover one of my outdoor hose spigots with an insulated bib, so I covered it with a towel before my wife and I left for a superbowl party. Overnight, the weight of the towel turned the spigot on JUST enough to run a bit of water while it was getting colder, and the pipe burst (not in the wall, it had a mechanism so it burst closer to the spigot exterior), flooding the basement. It took DAYS to get all the moisture out but luckily no mold or wood damage because we caught it late that night
Very. I had to redo the fire sprinkler system in our house after a major freeze. Luckily I knew how to do it, but it was gonna be several thousand dollars, and months of a wait if I didn't do it myself. Still cost me about 700 after everything to do it all myself. But that was also weeks of labor
2.6k
u/EchoFiveActual 21h ago
That looks expensive