Summary

If a claim on your home and contents insurance is due to poor maintenance, it could be refused. This article includes a ten-point Home Maintenance Check.

Home and Contents Insurance. Poor maintenance can invalidate your cover.

Author: Michael Challiner

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except perhaps for occasional disagreements about how much something was worth. But another re-occurring difficulty is where damage is due to poor building maintenance. The homeowner has a duty of care and the insurers take a dim view of claims that the homeowner could, and should have, avoided. AS a result insurers may scale down or even reject your claim.

To avoid such problems you should give your house an annual Maintenance MOT. A springtime check would be good. By carrying out just a few simple checks, it should be possible to find problems ( online car insurance ) at an early stage.

Rain, wind, snow and frost place some of the biggest day-to-day strains on the structure of your home. Consequently, most homes develop a few problems in the autumn and winter months, so a springtime check can save much time and expense further down the line.

It's not as if you'll be paying money that you could claim later on an insurance claim. Indeed, any costs you claim that were really a maintenance issue, will be rejected by your insurance company.

Here's our 10 point springtime MOT for your home:

• Clean out the gutters. Autumn can be especially hard on gutters as lots of debris can accumulate. ( remortgages ) That must be removed. Blocked gutters and down spouts can quickly cause enormous damage if water is left to overflow and penetrate the structure. But please be careful with this job. Working up ladders is dangerous so why not get your window cleaner to do the job!

• Now get your binoculars out and check the roof. Search for cracked, loose or slipped tiles. A leaking roof can result in costly damage. Ceiling damage, rot, redecoration can quickly swallow up money. Then there's the a safety issue. If a tile slips off, someone could be badly injured. Even your car could take a direct hit!

• Check out your exterior paintwork. Any cracked, peeling, or blistered paintwork needs ( motor insurance ) attention. Touch it up to preserve the wood from damage. Summer time can be surprisingly hard on paintwork. High temperatures and big temperature changes create expansion and contraction cracks ready to let in the following winter to do its worst.

• If you've heavily used an open fire during the { motor insurance quotes } winter, get the chimney swept. Heavy build-ups of soot can easily catch fire and during the summer the soot absorbs damp.

• Take a walk around the house and make sure that nothing is covering over ( car insurance quotes ) the damp course. Pilled up garden rubbish is the most common offender. Grass cuttings are not your home's best friend! If damp gets past the damp course your walls inside will get damp resulting in damaged to plasterwork decoration. Over time, rot will set in.

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