Policy note
Water damage in a ground floor maisonette
Water damage is the situation the household conditions treat in the most detail, because water travels and the cause is usually somewhere other than the mess.
What follows is the ordinary position at Noorderdijk. The policy schedule and the conditions document together are what a claim is assessed against, and where this note and those documents differ, those documents are the ones that count.
A ground floor maisonette carries what comes down from the floors above and what comes up from the ground beneath, and the conditions deal with the two under separate headings.
02
What the policy covers here
- Sudden escape of water from a pipe, a tank or an appliance inside the building.
- The work needed to reach the leak, such as lifting a floor or opening a wall.
- Drying the structure afterwards, and making good what was opened to get at the leak.
- Reasonable costs of stopping the water in the first hours, an emergency plumber included.
- Damage to the things in the home that the water reached, where those are insured.
03
What it does not cover here
- Slow seepage that has been going on long enough to stain or to rot.
- The failed part itself, which is a repair rather than damage.
- Water that came in through a roof or a wall that was already in poor condition.
- Groundwater rising through a floor, which is a section of its own.
A leak found early is a plumber. A leak found late is a floor, a ceiling and a wall. That is the whole reason the conditions ask for an early report.