After one of the wettest years on record many Australians have had the unfortunate luck to suffer water damage to their home. Our wishes go out to those who have lost homes, valuable possessions or worse.

These people will already know the finer detail of their home and contents insurance policies in relation to water damage, but have those of us that haven’t been affected understand their cover? Probably not.

So, what do you need to know? It will all be detailed in your policy and product disclosure statements so dig these out and read them carefully. If you can’t find them call your insurer and ask for the documents to be sent to you.

Here are a couple of tips about water damage and your HBF house insurance and contents insurance:

• Water damage occurs for a number of reasons and it’s important to assess your location and likely risks in order to know whether your insurance provides you with good coverage. For example, water damage can occur when heavy rain leaks through your roof or causes your roof to break, or when heavy rain creates localised flooding around your house causing water to enter your house, or when a man-made watercourse nearby overflows and causes water to enter your house, or when generalised natural flooding causes water to enter your house (whether or not it was raining in your area), or when storm water drains overflow and so on. Your insurance policy will probably treat these events differently so your risk and cover will vary depending on whether the home is near a watercourse, located in a gully, in a region prone to heavy rain, on top of a hill and so on. Assess your risk and read your policy documents.
• There are different types of water damage and not all damage can be linked to a specific event. For example, rising damp may have been caused because your house is in a low lying area that collects water during heavy rains, however it may be excluded from your home and contents insurance policy. If your shower leaks it may damage wooden floor boards or if your gutters overflow it may cause water to enter your walls. In these cases the insurance probably won’t cover the water damage as the damage occurred as a result of failure to properly maintain your home. However, as another example, if your dishwasher breaks unexpectedly and causes water to leak under a carpet you may well be covered as the water damage was accidental.

In general, damage from flooding (water covering land that would usually be dry) will not normally be covered, however damage due to storms will often be covered. Again, read your policy documents and product disclosure statement to understand your position and call your insurance company if you specifically want certain events included in the policy.