Have you ever gone away for vacation and come back to a house that was not quite the way you left it?  A few years ago, we went on a family vacation to Florida to visit the grandparents over spring break.  It was an amazing vacation – sunny skies, warm temperatures, and a pool right outside the back door!  We returned from vacation all rested and relaxed …… to a pool of our very own in the basement!  Our sump pump had stuck in the off position so all the melting snow went right into our not working sump pump and into our basement.  We had a 15” deep pool of our very own (not exactly swim worthy however).  Our furnace was fried (so it was a really chilly house too), my office, conveniently located in the basement away from the noises of the household, was destroyed.  We lost two computers, a Stairmaster, countless books and movies, a mattress set in the guest room, and many other miscellaneous items.  All in all, we lost around $5,000 worth of our stuff.  But, that doesn’t even include the clean up costs.  We needed to remove all of the water from the basement, replace drywall and carpet, plus dry out everything we could salvage.

In any water damage situation, it’s always a good idea to have professionals come in to clean it up.  The potential for mold damage or wet rot to incorrectly or insufficiently dried areas is pretty high.  The cost for their services though can be expensive.  Most home insurance policies provide a limited amount of coverage for Water Damage as a result of a sump pump or sewer backup.  My policy at the time only provided $5,000 of coverage.  This covered the cleanup costs, but didn’t provide much coverage at all for the loss to our contents.

My recommendations:  First, have someone check on your home when you’re going to be out of town.  If we had someone checking the basement, the sump pump situation could have been caught earlier and minimized the damage.  Second, check your home policy to see what your limitations are for water backup coverage.  Contact your agent to see if you can buy more coverage.  If you can, do it!  Third, you may want to shut the water main off when you’re going to be gone for a period of time.  This would not have helped my claim situation, but imagine what would have happened if we had a deep freeze while we were gone?  Our furnace was not working due to the water in the basement.  We could have easily had frozen pipes to deal with in addition to the sump pump water.  On the plus side, there is no coverage limitation for damage caused by frozen pipes so if we did have that loss, our damage would have been covered subject to our dwelling limit.  But still, if you have the opportunity to prevent a claim from happening in the first place, take it.  The frustration and sadness of losing your belongings, and having to deal with all the details of insurance claims is not exactly a great end to the perfect vacation.

As always we at Harbor/Brenn are here to assist you.  Hopefully my bad experience will help you as you prepare for your Spring Break vacations!  For all those traveling in the next few weeks, I hope you have a wonderful stress-free and no insurance-claim experience!

Ashley Whitney, CIC

p.s. If you are planning to travel, check out our travel tips at http://www.harborbrenn.com/component/content/article/5-news/55-travel-tips

disclaimer: The photo is representative of my loss, but not my exact damage.  I wasn't thinking clearly enough at the time to photo document my experience for the benefit of others. :)