Wet, collapsed 7 year old conservatory floor, who is responsible?

[BankFodder]

You should start off by telling us the name of the company which carried out the work – unless you feel that you need to protect their reputation for them.

On what basis did the insurance company decline liability?

Have you carried out any exploration in order to ascertain the source of the water? This is extremely important.

Have you had any opinions as to how the floor should have been constructed? Or maybe it was constructed correctly but the ingress of water was the problem.

[BankFodder]

I'm sorry that you haven't answered my questions above – especially about the insurance.

Insurance companies decline liability as a matter of course. It is important to understand the basis upon which they are refusing.

Typically insurance companies will not cover you for the fault itself but any damage which flows from that is generally speaking insured.

If that's correct in this case – although you haven't told us why the insurer declined, then you say you have identified a failed course of bricks. That would be the fault – uninsured – and then the damage which is caused by the fault would typically be insured. If this is correct then the insurance would have to pick up the bill for the repairs to the damage caused by the leak.

 

You should also name the company involved – as has been suggested here more than once.

[BankFodder]

Thank you – but this doesn't address my question as to why your claim was declined. I understand that the company is called TW S Leeds. Are they the people who built the conservatory including the faulty brickwork? Did they construct the entire conservatory?



 

[BankFodder]

Firstly, are you recording your calls? Have you read our customer services guide? Do this before you have any telephone contact.

Secondly, have you had any expert opinion as to the cause of the problem. I think that you are going to have to compartmentalise the problem so that you identify the source of the water, the point of ingress, and the consequent damage.

I haven't seen your insurance policy but if you are generally speaking insured against damp and so forth then the insurance will probably exclude the point of ingress – which would be the building fault. That could be the subject of a separate legal action but we will see as we go along.

Secondly, you should check your insurance policy now and see whether conservatories are excluded. I'm afraid that this kind of thing can happen. If they exclude a conservatory then you need to understand what they mean by a conservatory. It sounds to me as if you have had your structure built on a brick foundation and it may be that that is within the area of cover. Check this out immediately.

You will be best off putting things in writing to your insurance company.

Therefore I suggest you do things in this order:

Check your policy
get an expert opinion to identify the ingress point
come back here.

 

When you check the policy you are going to look for what they cover – in other words to think that they will cover the point of ingress
what they don't cover – do you think that conservatories are excluded.

Please can you try and deal with all these points carefully. You can't imagine how difficult it is to keep on asking questions and find that they're not addressed.