The split that decides it
Home insurance is written around sudden, unforeseen events. Plumbing fails in two ways, and only one of them looks like an event.
When a pipe lets go and water damages the building, that is the insured event, and the escape of water peril responds to the damage. When the pipe itself has corroded, a valve gland has been weeping for two years, or a flexible hose has perished, the failure is the thing the policy treats as maintenance.
esure's published booklet states the split plainly in its escape of water section: it will pay for loss or damage caused by water escaping from tanks, pipes, fixed equipment, domestic appliances or fixed heating systems, and it will not pay for damage "to the tank, pipe or installation itself if caused by normal wear and tear". Same page, same peril, two opposite answers depending on which side of the split you are on.
| What failed | Usually treated as | Who normally pays for the repair |
|---|
| Copper pipe splits in a freeze, floor soaked | Insured event | Insurer pays the damage; the pipe repair is often yours |
| Pinhole in 40-year-old pipework under screed | Deterioration | You, for the pipe. The damage is arguable. |
| Weeping radiator valve you have known about | Maintenance | You |
| Boiler stops working, no water escaped | Breakdown | Boiler cover or home emergency, not buildings |
| Water through failed bath sealant | Not escape of water at all | You |
Three things people mean by "plumbing cover", and they are different products
Buildings insurance
Covers physical damage to the structure from listed perils, escape of water among them. It is not a maintenance contract and does not exist to replace worn components.
Home emergency cover
An add-on, often with its own small limit, aimed at making a situation safe and stopping it getting worse rather than finishing the job. Several wordings exclude routine maintenance explicitly; esure's home emergency section excludes normal day to day maintenance and loss or damage from a lack of proper maintenance.
Boiler or heating cover
A service and breakdown product. A boiler that has stopped is its problem. A boiler that has flooded a kitchen is the buildings policy's problem, and often both are involved at once.
People are often told "you are covered" by one of these and then claim under another. Check which product the schedule actually shows.
"Gradual operating cause", and why it is not the end of the argument
Most escape of water sections carry an exclusion for damage caused by a gradually operating cause. Insurers lean on it hard for slow leaks, and it is the single most common reason a genuine leak claim is refused.
It is not decisive on its own. The Financial Ombudsman Service publishes its approach: it is likely to tell an insurer to pay where the damage was caused by an insured event such as escape of water, where you could not reasonably have been aware of the damage happening gradually, and where you claimed or acted as soon as you reasonably could have known. That test, not the presence of the clause, is what an ombudsman applies. We set it out in full on our slow leak page.
It also cuts the other way. Homeprotect's booklet defines gradual damage to include failing to address a known issue, "or one you should have reasonably known about". A dripping joint photographed in a survey two years ago is a known issue.
Trace and access is a separate sub-limit, and it has a condition
Finding a hidden leak is not part of the repair budget. Where a policy includes trace and access, it is a capped allowance for removing and reinstating the parts of the building opened up during the search. Admiral publishes £5,000 on its standard and Gold home policies and £10,000 on Platinum, and states that it does not extend to repairing the source of the leak or to the damage the leak caused.
The condition matters more than the number. In a published ombudsman decision on an AA Underwriting buildings policy, the wording paid for locating the source of the damage, and the ombudsman agreed with the insurer's reading that there must first be damage to the property caused by the leak: no water damage, no cover for finding the leak. The complaint was still upheld, because the damage existed on the underside of the flooring even though it was not visible from above, and the ombudsman did not accept that investigations must be prompted by visible damage.
What to read in your own schedule
- The escape of water section, and specifically the words to the tank, pipe or installation itself.
- Gradual operating cause, gradual damage, wear and tear, lack of maintenance.
- Trace and access, its limit per claim, and whether it is conditional on damage to the property.
- Good state of repair, a defined term on some wordings that imports a maintenance obligation into the whole policy.
- The escape of water excess, which is frequently higher than the standard excess.
Cover differs between insurers and between tiers of the same policy. Your schedule and booklet are the only authority on what you hold; nothing here is a statement about your cover, and we do not give insurance or financial advice.
When not to call us
A tap that drips, a loose compression nut you can reach and nip up, a toilet that runs after the flush, a radiator that needs bleeding. Those are jobs for a plumber or for you, and none of them needs leak detection. Call us when water is arriving somewhere you cannot see the source of, or when a system will not hold pressure and there is nothing visible to blame, which is the case described on our pressure loss page.
What we do and what it costs
We locate the failure, repair the pipework, and make good the floor, wall or ceiling we opened. Detection is charged at £150 per hour, agreed before we attend, with no find, no fee if we do not locate it. The report is written to be read by a loss adjuster, which is the practical part of a trace and access claim. If you are about to claim, making a water leak insurance claim step by step sets out the order to do things in, and if the leak is in a bathroom, bathroom leak insurance claims explains the sealant and grout exclusion that decides most of them. More on how claims are handled from the engineer's side is on our insurance claims hub.
