The fact that the insurance industry pays out £2.5 million every day to escape of water home insurance claims is sobering. Tackling the rising costs of escape of water claims must be priority for property insurers but how?
Water related claims are prolific. There is flood or water ingress through storm, damaged roofs, blocked gutters for a start and have not even started to consider the impacts of failing basement and sub-basement waterproofing systems and sump pumps.
Escape of water losses are leaks caused by old and corroded pipes as well as burst or frozen pipes or might result from simply hammering a nail into a water pipe as part of a D.I.Y project. Claims costs are increased by locating and accessing the leak, ‘trace and access’, then there is the cost of the repairs as well as the cost of water damage caused by the leak. The average cost of a burst pipe claim is £7,000 across the insurance industry.
Today, within the modern home, there are more plumbed-in domestic appliances, more central heating, more en-suite bathrooms and more hidden integrated plumbing than ever combined with less water damage resistant materials such as chip board. With more plumbing, often in more density, equipment failure of fittings pipes and valves are common but leaking toilets are also a quite common cause of escape of water. A quarter of all insurance claims made on flats are water leaks.
With other aspects of risk management technology has led to great improvements in intruder alarm, fire detection and CCTV systems reducing theft and fire losses significantly. Escape of water poses more serious problems. Plumbing and heating systems, (unless in a new property), tend to have been altered and added to over time, adding further devices to check them can be problematic. In sensitive areas such as comms rooms, storerooms or vaults water detection can be via electrical resistivity detectors, either fixed point or rope loop type connected to a warning alarm. In situations where relative humidity is being monitored a sudden rise might also be an early alert to an escape of water. Water pressure flow sensor systems exist but mostly commonly apply to larger properties and are installed in the plant room. Auto shut-off solenoid valves, sensors and SMS dialler, (auto-dialler), tend to be blunt weapons whereby normal, but high usage, might cause a shutdown potentially leaving heating boiler to shut down also. A new alternative Flowless uses computer analytics to learn how each water application, be it a toilet flush or washing-machine has a discernible ‘fingerprint’ in terms of water usage, a computer algorithm can recognise these signatures, even if they are over lapping, and can then alert for manual checking if something looks abnormal. The alert is usually by SMS. The system would require more than one detector found throughout larger properties but can learn and is the path that future development shall follow.
As you can see there is no single straightforward solution at hand; until there is, all members of a household should be able to find the main stopcock and be sure as to how to turn it on and off. Keep the stopcock oiled and never force it! Repair dripping taps and keep contact details for emergency plumbers at hand.
