What insurance covers when water leaks

What this section covers

The three separate costs a water leak can produce, which of them insurance is designed to address, and how to find out what your own policy does about each.

It exists because the three get collapsed into one question, "will my insurance cover it", which has no single answer. Separating them is most of the work, and once they are separated the questions to put to your insurer are obvious.

This site has read no insurance policy, so it makes no claim about how many policies contain anything, and no figure about insurance appears here. Where the page says how this kind of cover is usually STRUCTURED, that is a description of the shape of the product rather than a count, and every one of them is written as a prompt to check your own documents. If you find a sentence here that reads as a finding about the market rather than as a question for your paperwork, it is a defect and worth reporting.

How it works in the UK

Buildings insurance responds to named events rather than to problems in general. Water escaping from a pipe is one of those named events, usually called escape of water, and that name is what the cover is organised around.

The middle row is the one this site cares about most, because it pays for exactly the work a leak that nobody can see actually requires. It is also the row most people have never heard of. The row people ask about first is the third, and it is the least likely of the three to be covered.

And the middle row is the reason a survey is not simply an expense to be avoided. the cost of tracing and accessing the leak is the work that cover is named after, and knowing whether you hold it changes whether that cost is yours.

The figures that matter

Three numbers, and every one of them is in your own paperwork rather than on this site. No figure about insurance appears anywhere here, because none could be sourced honestly.

• The trace and access limit, if you have that cover. It is usually a stated sum and it is separate from the sum insured on the building.
• The excess, and specifically whether escape of water carries its own. Where a policy sets a separate excess for water damage it can be substantially larger than the standard one, so whether yours does is worth establishing rather than assuming either way.
• What a claim would do to your future premiums, which your insurer can tell you and which nobody else can.

Those three decide the only question worth asking about a small leak, which is whether claiming is worth it at all. If the excess is close to what you would recover, it is not, and a claim made anyway costs you the excess and whatever the claim history costs later.

This site would rather you worked that out and decided not to claim than assume a claim is always the right answer. It is the same arithmetic as the break-even on the cost of delay page: the honest result is sometimes that the money does not justify the action.

How this changes your loss figure

It changes none of the volume and it changes none of the rate. A policy has no effect on how fast water is leaving your pipe.

What it changes is who pays for the consequences, and that is worth separating from the water itself, because they are not the same size. The water lost is usually a modest amount of money. The damage, and the work to find the leak, are usually much larger, and they are the two an insurer may be involved in.

The first row has a second route worth checking before any of this, because it is not an insurance question at all. whether a leak allowance can reduce that charge is your water company rather than your insurer, and the two are unrelated.

Assumptions and sources

No insurance policy has been read for this site and no figure about insurance appears on it. The three-way distinction above is structural, describing kinds of cost rather than what any insurer does about them, and the instructions are instructions to read your own documents.

• No claim is made about how many policies include trace and access, because that would need a survey of the market and none has been done here.
• No figure is given for a typical trace and access limit, a typical excess, or a typical claim, for the same reason.
• Nothing here is advice about whether to claim. It is the arithmetic you need in order to decide, using numbers only you have.

The one thing stated with confidence is the three-way distinction itself, and that is safe because it is about the structure of the question rather than about any answer. Damage, search and repair are genuinely three different costs, whatever any particular policy says about them.

What to do next

Four things, and the first is a search rather than a phone call.

• Open your buildings policy wording and search it for "trace and access". Those exact words are the standard name for the cover, so they will be there if it is.
• Note the excess, and check whether escape of water carries a separate one. Where it does, it is listed apart from the standard excess on the schedule rather than in the wording, so that is where to look.
• Establish where the leak is before deciding anything, because a supply pipe outside the building and a pipe under the kitchen floor are different questions for both your insurer and your water company.
• Work out whether a claim is worth making at all, by comparing what you would recover against the excess and what your insurer says a claim would do to your renewal.

Ask before anything irreversible is done, particularly before a floor comes up. That is not a claim about what policies require, it is one phone call standing between you and a decision you cannot undo.

Common questions