Worrying and waiting to call homeowner's insurance...

[NFLDERS]

We had that happen with a 15 year old dishwasher. The vinyl flooring suddenly (like almost overnight) turned brown at the seams. That was the first clue of an issue. I replaced the dishwasher, after drying out the subfloor for several days. Subfloor below the dishwasher was fine.
Insurance came out, wrote a check on the spot, for $700 (total estimate was $1,700, I had a $1,000 deductible) to replace the rest of the kitchen floor and underlayment, and gave me a list of preferred contractors who would fix it for that price. We picked one. and new flooring. Only issue we has was when they pulled up the old floor, they discovered there was another, identical vinyl floor below it. Same flooring. So insurance kicked in another $150 since that double the amount of work to remove the flooring. Only thing we can figure is the builder had planned to put tile flooring in, and changed his mind, and just put 2 floors down so that floor would be the same height as the adjoining Family room and hall.
Only stipulation insurance had was that we had to replace the faulty dishwasher at our own expense, which had already done before filing the claim.

You were unusually fortunate. I'm a retired Insurance Underwritter, and would have echoed piccolopat's reply as the norm/usual, and probable end result.

 

[tvguy]

You were unusually fortunate. I'm a retired Insurance Underwritter, and would have echoed piccolopat's reply as the norm/usual, and probable end result.

I have no idea, I just know the adjuster was only here about 10 minutes with his computer and portable printer and printed a check on the spot.
Normal wear and tear is an interesting situation. I've covered a lot of house fires over the last 40 years. The ones that had an electrical cause often are traced to worn out motors, switches and appliances. Never followed up with the homeowners, but on occasion I drive by some of them, and they always get rebuilt, so I assume the insurance paid up.

 

[smiths02]

I don't get the normal wear and tear line. We had a roof that they would not replace :/ it was "normal wear and tear" HOWEVER the insurance company did cut a check to repair all the places that the roof leak affected. (And everyone else we knew got a new roof, so Allstate just sucked).

We had a part of a toilet bust. The tenants were not there. Flooded the house. Now the toilet was old, so the part of the toilet was not covered, but all the damage was.

 

[mnrose]

I don't get the normal wear and tear line. We had a roof that they would not replace :/ it was "normal wear and tear" HOWEVER the insurance company did cut a check to repair all the places that the roof leak affected. (And everyone else we knew got a new roof, so Allstate just sucked).

We had a part of a toilet bust. The tenants were not there. Flooded the house. Now the toilet was old, so the part of the toilet was not covered, but all the damage was.

The AGE of the roof matters, as does the term of your specific policy. I know a bit about this as the roof of my house has been hail damaged 3 times since it was built (in 1999) and needed to be replaced. In each case, the roof was less than 6 years old (with 30 year shingles on it). Still, they gave us depreciated value of the roof (not a lot of depreciation, but still.....). Now, assume that the roof IS 30 years old and hail damaged. The roof has already reached the end of it's useful life, and needs to be replaced as part of routine home maintenance. Why would insurance pay for that?

Now, it IS possible to get a policy with replacement value in the terms, but I'm certain this would come at a higher premium.

This is where it is very important to ask the question....what, exactly, will my policy pay out if the roof is damaged by hail (or otherwise)? How do you calculate the payout?

I think many of us don't understand until it happens to you.

 

[Praying Colonel]

Returned from vacation a couple of years ago to discover a hose to our refrigerator had ruptured, causing water to run onto our hardwoods, through the subfloor, down a basement wall and into our finished basement. The remediation and repair work ($17,000!) was covered under our homeowners, less our deductible. It doesn't hurt to check if it's covered your policy.

 

[smiths02]

The AGE of the roof matters, as does the term of your specific policy. I know a bit about this as the roof of my house has been hail damaged 3 times since it was built (in 1999) and needed to be replaced. In each case, the roof was less than 6 years old (with 30 year shingles on it). Still, they gave us depreciated value of the roof (not a lot of depreciation, but still.....). Now, assume that the roof IS 30 years old and hail damaged. The roof has already reached the end of it's useful life, and needs to be replaced as part of routine home maintenance. Why would insurance pay for that?

Now, it IS possible to get a policy with replacement value in the terms, but I'm certain this would come at a higher premium.

This is where it is very important to ask the question....what, exactly, will my policy pay out if the roof is damaged by hail (or otherwise)? How do you calculate the payout?

I think many of us don't understand until it happens to you.

I was surprised we didn't at least get something. Our roof wasn't new but it wasn't old enough to be expected to be leaking, and there was significant hail. Allstate had a reputation at the time for denying roof claims much more than others. We also didn't really fight it, we just took the first adjustor's word for it and paid a roofer $5000 to get it fixed.

However, my point was that Allstate still covered all the damage to the house from the roof leak (basically parts of the ceiling we had to repaint), so I'm surprised that the OP's insurance company doesn't have to pay for some of the mold removal, fixing the floor, etc.

 

[brooke789]

No experience with this specifically, but we did have to file a homeowners claim last year. We had unknown hail damage which was discovered when we had our gutters cleaned. We called insurance and they said there had been a storm about 2 months prior that likely caused the damage and found 20 places where our roof was not up to par. They also had someone come into our house to make sure we didn't have leaks we weren't aware of (we didn't). We had the roof replace literally no problem. I know it's not the same thing, but it was pretty much hassle free. I expect whatever the damage you won't have any trouble with your insurance. This is just what they do!

 

[tcufrog]

It's pricey and a pain but I highly recommend going through mold remediation. We had a bathroom faucet slowly leak and we didn't discover the problem until mold had grown in the bottom of the cabinet under the sink. We got the leak fixed and we thought we had gotten rid of the mold ourselves using advice from our plumber but it turns out the the methods we used weren't severe enough to get rid of the mold. By the time we discovered that we hadn't gotten rid of the mold like we thought the mold had spread much further in the bathroom and it was a much more costly remediation job than if we had just called out the remediation company when we first discovered the mold.

 

[nkereina]

For my homeowner's policy in NY, I had to add a separate insurance rider to cover bust pipes or sump pump failures and any resulting damage, including mold. It wasn't covered under my basic policy, but only added about $50 a year to my premium. I know OP's issue stems from an appliance leak, but I wonder if it would be something similar.