Well, the closing date on our "new" house is May 1st, and the insurance broker calls today to tell us that we can't get insurance because we have galvanised plumbing ! HELP ! Two questions :
what is the problem with galvanised plumbing?
and who will insure us?
Anyone got any ideas ??
We are in Ontario, if that makes a difference . . . .
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What you have run into is 'new policies'. What that means is the house would have been insured no problem before (grandfathered) but when a new policy is written up (new owner being you), they insist on the upgrades.
For instance the old house I had before down the street had the same things this one had and I have the same insurance company but tough luck for me when it came to insuring this house. Same story would be for my neighbour who has never had any issues with the old plumbing or electrical but you can bet if she ever changed insurers... she'd have to upgrade it all to get a new policy going. Basically they are taking them as they come vs just making everyone with a policy do the upgrading.
The best you can usually do is find out what kind of grace period they will give you to do the upgrades while still insuring you. they may even have an option to insure everything except any damage caused by the offending problems until they are fixed.
BTw this could be one of those times you just see if you can add some money to the mortgage to do the improvements. It can be a little less painful that way (especially if you can get the bank to write it up as a secured line of credit separate from the mortgage).
thanks for the info, guys! I had put in a call to our realtor, she is going to contact their realtor and see who insures it now. It is out of town, and we really can't get in beforehand to do any work; the place is vacant because the previous owners split up and went their separate ways. From what I can gather, they might give us 30 days to fix it, and that is just not do-able for us! I did find another company on the internet that might insure it, and still have to check that out. Also, our realtor say Co-operators should insure it, so we may have to go that route. However, going with someone else means losing our no-claims discount and our loyalty discoutn etc., and that may cost us a bit over time!
Always one little problem more . . . we are moving the first weekend of May!
The federal government is giving homeowners 15% rebate on expenditures over $1000 (I think)....you might have to accumulate your receipts and submit all at once. Just google it, you'll find the details. you may qualify.
They won't insure galvanized because they want it replaced with something less likely to break under higher water pressure. I had to go through this and it's really not as big a deal as I thought it would be. Your insurer should cover you for a set period (I had 30 days) while you get things fixed to their standard so ask about that.
What they are afraid of is the water pressure coming in is too high now for the old pipes so everything from the shut off valve (usually just inside the basement) coming in has to be replaced. Your main sewer stack and any copper or plastic can remain. Again, they (the insurance company) should be able to tell you exactly because if you can you want to avoid extra work like replacing water leaving the house (all the drains).
Can you get a plumber in there to give you a quote? I have a little bungalow with an unfinished basement so all the pipes were visible. Some of the pipes were okay so when I had it done it cost about $500 to replace everything with plastic and took a half a day. I also had to pay for a permit because the insurance company wanted to see a city sticker saying everything was to code. Those plastic lines they use go in so fast and easy it doesn't take them much time or hassle.
What you have to watch out for happened to me with electrical work for insurance (I had to install 100 amp service). The insurance had one requirement but the city had another that said they were not giving any stickers on work on houses that had above ground lines going to things like garages outside. Mine had that so I had to do that too even though the insurance couldn't care less. So extra expense just to get that stupid sticker. The electrician I hired knew the rules so at least it wasn't an awful surprise just extra on the initial quote.
BTW I had some trades that were well known to the inspectors so those inspectors came in and barely looked around. If they know the tradesperson they won't hassle much but I was told if the homeowner goes in to get the permit they will check every corner of the house. The insurance person that comes only wants to see those stickers. So hiring a reputable tradesperson pays off there.