The problem with an empty flat in December
An unattended leak is not a worse leak. It is the same leak running for longer, which is an entirely different repair. A joint that weeps for two hours while you are in the house is a towel and a plumber. The same joint weeping for eleven days while you are away is saturated joists, a collapsed ceiling in the flat below and a claim with two policyholders in it.
That is the practical reason to prepare. The reason people actually get caught out, though, is the paperwork: the cover they assumed was there turns out to have been suspended or conditioned the moment the property counted as unoccupied.
What insurers actually require of an unoccupied property
The Financial Ombudsman Service, writing for insurers about escape of water claims in unoccupied properties, sets out the conditions policies typically impose. Their list is worth reading as a checklist:
- Heating. The heating may need to be kept on and above a certain temperature.
- Inspections. The property may need to be visited at certain intervals — for example, every seven days — and sometimes a record must be kept of the visits.
- Draining down. The heating system and water tanks may need to be drained throughout certain periods of the year, usually during the colder months, November to March.
Those three conditions can and do appear together, and the third is the one people miss entirely. A policy that requires a drain-down between November and March is not satisfied by leaving the thermostat at 15°C. If yours says drain, drain — draining a system properly is a job in itself, and half-doing it leaves water sitting in exactly the low points that freeze.
How long is "unoccupied"?
The Ombudsman's guidance for businesses says most home insurance policies suspend cover for certain insured events — theft, attempted theft, malicious damage and escape of water among them — once a home has been unoccupied for a period, usually 30 or 60 days.
It then makes a point worth holding on to: policies rarely define the term "unoccupied", although it is potentially ambiguous. It could mean the property is uninhabitable, or it could mean nobody was actually living there at the relevant time. Where a definition does exist it is often vague — the Ombudsman gives the example of wording that requires someone to stay overnight regularly without clarifying what regularly means. Where a term is unclear, the Ombudsman reads it in the consumer's favour, and generally supports policyholders whose properties are visited on a reasonably frequent basis.
The practical consequence for a two-week Christmas absence is reassuring: two weeks is well inside any 30 or 60 day clause, and an ordinary holiday does not make a home unoccupied in the policy sense. The people who need to read their wording closely are the ones with a property between tenancies, a probate property, a second home, a flat being renovated, or a long trip that runs past the threshold.
The date the leak started, not the date you found it
This is the single most useful thing in the Ombudsman's guidance, and almost nobody knows it.
They give this example: a policy might exclude cover once a property has been unoccupied for 30 days, and a leak is discovered on day 31. If the evidence suggests the leak actually started on day 29, the Ombudsman is unlikely to support the insurer applying the exclusion.
What follows from that is evidential. If you come back to a flooded flat on day 31, the question of when the water started running is worth real money, and it is answerable: a smart meter's consumption record, a water meter reading you took before you left compared with the reading on your return, a thermostat or smart heating log showing when the boiler started running continuously, a neighbour who noticed a stain, the dates on any photographs. Take a meter reading before you leave. It costs you thirty seconds and it is the cheapest piece of evidence you will ever gather — how to read your water meter covers the method.
Material breach: the condition you broke has to be the one that caused the loss
The Ombudsman's position is that an insurer should only decline a claim if the breach of terms is material to the loss. Their worked example: a consumer failed to drain the water tank in the loft, but the escape of water came from a downstairs radiator. In that situation the Ombudsman is unlikely to agree that it is fair or reasonable for the insurer to decline the claim.
Their separate guidance for businesses puts the general principle plainly: insurers must not unreasonably reject a claim, and it is not good industry practice to reject a claim where the policyholder's breach of a policy condition was only technical and not connected to the circumstances of the claim.
So a declined claim is not automatically the end of it. If you have been turned down because you missed an inspection or did not drain a tank, the question to put back to the insurer is whether that failure caused or contributed to the loss that actually happened. If it did not, say so in writing, and if they hold the line, the Ombudsman is free to use. There is more on the wider pattern in why water leak claims get declined.
What to actually do, by length of absence
| How long you are away | What to do |
|---|
| A few days to two weeks | Heating on low rather than off. WaterSafe advise at least 14°C when you are away from home. Turn the internal stop tap off if you are comfortable doing so. Ask a neighbour to look in, which the Met Office also suggests. |
| Two to four weeks | The above, plus check your policy's unoccupancy clause before you go, and note the date you left. Arrange a visit if the policy asks for one, and write the date down. |
| Beyond the policy threshold, or over winter | Tell your insurer. Expect conditions, and expect one of them to be a drain-down if it falls between November and March. Unoccupied property cover exists and is usually cheaper than an argument about whether the standard policy responded. |
If the property is let, the tenant's absence is not the same as yours and the responsibility split is its own question — see our page on landlord water leak responsibility.
Turning the water off is not the whole answer
Closing the stop tap stops the mains, and that is the right move for most absences. It does not empty the building. A cold water storage tank in the loft, a hot water cylinder and a sealed heating circuit all hold their own water and will keep feeding a leak after the mains is shut. A gravity-fed tank in a cold London loft can empty itself through a split feed pipe over a weekend with the stop tap firmly off.
That is why the drain-down condition exists, and why, for a long winter absence, off-and-drained beats off-and-hopeful.
When not to call us, and what we are actually for
Do not call a leak specialist to prepare a property. Everything above is reading, a thermostat, a meter reading and possibly an ordinary plumber for the drain-down.
Call us when you come back to damage and cannot see where the water came from. A burst that ran for a fortnight has usually spread well away from its source, and the wet ceiling is rarely under the split. We isolate and pressure-test to confirm the loss, then trace it with thermal imaging, moisture mapping and tracer gas before anything is opened, and we write the report your insurer will want. Where making the access leaves a hole, our own handymen and builders put the floor, ceiling or plaster back, which is the trace, access and reinstatement job. Our rate is £150 per hour, agreed before we attend, and if we do not find the leak you do not pay for the time spent looking.
