Will Homeowner’s Insur­ance Cov­er My Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Repairs?

Jan 17, 2013 • By Matthew Stock with Barry Schilling.

It all start­ed with cracks.

One day you looked up and noticed cracks in the dry­wall in your din­ing room that you had nev­er seen before. Curi­ous, you checked the kitchen and the liv­ing room. More cracks.

Then came a nice spring day and you decid­ed to open some win­dows. After wrestling with a stuck sash in win­dow after win­dow you began to think that some­thing was wrong.

So, you called out a foun­da­tion repair expert and he gave you the bad news – due to last year’s drought, the foun­da­tion of your house had dropped on one end and all those cracks and stuck win­dows were the symp­toms of a big­ger problem.

After a thor­ough inspec­tion he gave you an esti­mate to repair the dam­age and, though you knew it was fair, it was a sig­nif­i­cant expense. Then it hit you – maybe my homeowner’s insur­ance will cov­er this!

Homeowner’s Insur­ance Typ­i­cal­ly Will Not Cov­er Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Repairs

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that call to your insur­ance agent is prob­a­bly going to dis­ap­point you.

Homeowner’s insur­ance is a form of prop­er­ty & casu­al­ty cov­er­age that is intend­ed to pro­tect the struc­ture, prop­er­ty and con­tents of your home. A key con­cept of any insur­ance cov­er­age of this type is that it is designed to pro­tect your and your home from ​“sud­den and acci­den­tal” loss­es, such as fire, theft and flood damage.

By its very nature, struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age caused by changes in soil con­di­tions and/​or hydro­sta­t­ic or lat­er­al water pres­sure is nei­ther sud­den nor real­ly acci­den­tal. As a result, it prob­a­bly won’t be cov­ered under your homeowner’s insur­ance. The con­di­tions that con­tribute to struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age are con­sid­ered to be avoid­able by keep­ing up with home main­te­nance, which make it dou­bly impor­tant that you take action to avoid struc­tur­al dam­age and the cost­ly repairs that follow.

What Can I Do to Pre­vent Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Damage?

Admit­ted­ly, drought con­di­tions are beyond your con­trol but there are still sev­er­al things you can do to avoid suf­fer­ing foun­da­tion dam­age. They all involve man­ag­ing water out­side your home because it is the water in the soil that sur­rounds your foun­da­tion that has the biggest impact on its integrity.

• Keep Gut­ters Clean and Flow­ing – The eas­i­est thing you can do is to main­tain your gut­ters so that water flows freely through them and doesn’t spill over and sat­u­rate the soil around the foundation.
• Extend Down­spouts Away from the House – If your down­spouts are dis­charg­ing water right next to the foun­da­tion, it doesn’t mat­ter how clean your gut­ters are. Under­ground down­spout exten­sions will car­ry water away from your foun­da­tion with­out cre­at­ing an unsight­ly mess that com­pli­cates nor­mal lawn care.
• Be Care­ful with Land­scap­ing – Don’t plant trees or shrubs too close to the foun­da­tion, heap soil or mulch against the foun­da­tion or allow bor­ders of plant­i­ng beds to cre­ate dams that hold water near the house.
• Check Your Grade – Make sure the grade of your lawn isn’t ​“reversed” – slant­i­ng toward the house so that water runs back toward the foun­da­tion instead of away from it.

So, the best way to avoid the expense of struc­tur­al foun­da­tion repairs is to do every­thing you can to pre­vent struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age. The best way to accom­plish this is with the help of a base­ment water­proof­ing expert that can show you the best and most cost-effec­tive ways to man­age water around your foundation.

At U.S. Water­proof­ing, we know how to do yard drainage. Our experts have a full set of tools at their dis­pos­al, includ­ing exte­ri­or drain tile, under­ground down­spout exten­sions and oth­ers. If your prob­lem has already pro­gressed to the point where you need the ser­vices of a struc­tur­al foun­da­tion repair expert, our spe­cial­ly-trained struc­tur­al advi­sors can rec­om­mend the lat­est and most cost-effec­tive tech­nol­o­gy to repair your foun­da­tion. In either case, why not ask for our free advice?

Tags: homeowners insurance, foundation repair, foundation damage, foundation repairs, structural foundation damage, structural foundation repair

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