The short version, then the four things that change it
Escape of water is a standard named peril on buildings policies. esure's booklet covers loss or damage to buildings or contents from water escaping from tanks, pipes, fixed equipment, domestic appliances or fixed heating systems, and from water freezing in tanks, equipment or pipes. A pipe that has burst is squarely inside that description, and the damage it caused is what the section is there to pay for.
The reason people still find themselves arguing is that four separate things sit between the burst and the payment.
1. The pipe is usually excluded from its own claim
Nearly every wording separates the damage from the item that failed. esure excludes damage "to the tank, pipe or installation itself if caused by normal wear and tear". Homeprotect takes the other route and caps it, publishing a £250 per claim limit for repairing the cause of the leak, such as replacing a broken pipe or a faulty valve, while covering the water damage more widely.
So a burst in a corroded run can produce a paid claim for the ceiling and an unpaid bill for the pipework. That is normal, and it is not the insurer being difficult.
The exception people expect and often do not get: a freeze burst on sound pipework is an event rather than deterioration, which is a better argument on the pipe itself than age-related corrosion. Whether a particular wording follows that logic is a booklet question.
2. Unoccupancy is the condition that quietly voids winter claims
This catches more burst claims than any other single term, and it catches London flats in particular.
esure's escape of water section does not pay where the house is unfurnished or unoccupied. Homeprotect excludes escape of water incidents occurring between 1 October and 1 April inclusive if the home is unoccupied, and defines unoccupied to include a home noted as occupied but not lived in for more than 30 consecutive days, with "lived in" meaning someone regularly sleeps there and cooks and bathes there.
Thirty days is shorter than people think. An extended trip, a probate property, a flat between tenancies, a renovation where nobody is sleeping on site: all of those can move a property into the unoccupied definition without anyone deciding anything. Most wordings then impose conditions instead of removing cover altogether, typically draining the system down or maintaining a minimum temperature, and those conditions are in the booklet, not on the schedule.
An insurer cannot rely on just any breach. Under FCA rules an insurer must not unreasonably reject a claim, and ICOBS treats rejection for a breach of a condition or warranty as unreasonable where the breach is unconnected to the circumstances of the claim. A breach of a winter heating condition is very much connected to a freeze burst. A breach of an unrelated condition is not.
3. Trace and access is separate, capped, and conditional
If the burst is visible, this barely arises. If the pipe let go under a floor or inside a wall and all you have is a wet patch, the search itself is a cost, and it sits under trace and access rather than under the repair.
Admiral publishes trace and access limits of £5,000 on its standard and Gold home policies and £10,000 on Platinum, and is explicit that the cover is for removing and replacing parts of the building to find the source, not for repairing the pipe or for the damage the leak caused. In an ombudsman decision on an AA Underwriting policy, the wording paid up to a stated limit for locating the source of the damage, and the ombudsman accepted that there must be damage to the property for that cover to engage at all, while rejecting the further argument that the damage had to be visible before the search began.
The practical reading: find the damage, document it, then open up.
4. The excess is often higher for water
Schedules routinely carry a separate, larger escape of water excess alongside the standard one, and on several wordings that same excess applies to the trace and access element. On a modest burst in a hallway the excess can be most of the claim, which is a decision to make before you report it rather than after.
What to do in the first hour, in order
- Stop the water. Internal stopcock, usually under the kitchen sink or in a hall cupboard. If you cannot find it, our burst pipe page covers the alternatives.
- Kill the power to anything the water is reaching, at the consumer unit.
- Photograph everything before you move it, with the date intact. This is the evidence the claim rests on and it cannot be recreated later.
- Drain down by opening the lowest taps, so the pipework stops feeding the leak.
- Report it to the insurer, and take the claim reference before you instruct anyone. Emergency mitigation is normally fine; a full repair before the insurer has seen it is a fight you do not need.
- Keep the failed section of pipe. It is physical evidence of the failure mode and costs nothing to keep in a bag.
The words to look for in your own schedule
- Escape of water and freezing of water in tanks, equipment or pipes.
- Unoccupied and unfurnished, and the number of consecutive days in the definition.
- Any minimum temperature or drain down condition for periods away.
- Escape of water excess, as a separate line from the standard excess.
- Trace and access and its limit per claim.
Cover varies by insurer and by tier. Your own schedule and policy booklet are the only authority on what you hold, and nothing on this page is a statement about your policy.
Belongings are a separate claim with a separate excess. What that half pays for, and what it never does, is in does contents insurance cover leaks.
What we do and what it costs
A visible burst does not need detection, it needs isolating and repairing, and we do that. Detection is for the burst you cannot see: a split under screed, inside a stud wall, or in a riser. That is charged at £150 per hour agreed in advance, with no find, no fee, and we repair and reinstate afterwards rather than handing you a hole. See burst pipe repair, and the claim mechanics on our insurance claims hub.
