Does Home Insurance Normally Cover Drain Back Ups from Sewer Lines?

While most homeowners are aware of plumbing problems such as leaking faucets, blocked sinks, and damaged water heating systems, sewer backups resulting from tree roots are often ignored. Tree roots gravitate toward damp, nutritionally endowed soils. They often flourish within that soil, and the outflow from your residence is ideal for their growth. Steam and liquids will lure roots from surrounding trees if the drainage system has a tiny fracture or the connectors are not entirely watertight.

What begins as a relatively small tendril curving through a very small opening gradually expands. The root can frequently push open space in the piping system and form a maze of gangly roots within. As time passes and the roots become bigger, they obstruct the water waste from your residence, causing backups. This is technically how tree roots can wreak havoc in your home.

How to Know When Your Drainages Have Tree Roots

• Sluggish drains – If you’ve realized that your sink, toilet, or tub are flowing slowly, it might indicate that you have roots in your drainages. While this could indicate a blockage in your drain, tree roots have a similar effect on drains and should be inspected for precision.
• Bad odors after flushing – This is a sure sign of roots in drainages, especially if the roots begin to cause a blockage. The bad smells can sometimes be detected even when the drainage system is not in use.
• Sinkholes near drains – Once tree roots infiltrate your drainage systems, they inevitably cause pipe destruction, resulting in huge leaks. The additional water deposited in the soil eventually causes the ground around the drainages to sink over time.
• Extremely green zones on your property – If you have roots in your drainage system, the drains’ areas will get unusually greener because of the extra soil moisture.

Does Home Insurance cover the Damage?

A typical residential insurance plan covers unexpected and unintentional repairs. Tree roots, on the other hand, are neither. This is due to the fact that homeowner’s insurance covers both rapid and unintentional damage, and tree roots develop over time. The drainage system destruction they cause is unlikely to cover the pipe maintenance for tree root intrusion.

A few insurance companies may encompass the related water damage caused by water backup; however, as documented in the constraints, most do not. This means you might have to take care of the damages yourself, including pipe repair, costing you thousands.

Some insurance companies provide an additional rider for sewer line coverage that causes basement flooding. This form of insurance or rider may pay the expenses of repairing the sewer line. Because the servicing entails digging up a section of the pipe, repairing the leak, extracting the root incursion, backfilling, and landscaping, additional rider insurance can save you.

Instead of dealing with the problem when it pops out, it is better to have the situation under control. You can do this by scheduling regular maintenance checks through professional companies. It will cost you less if you catch the problem early.