The first 48 hours after water gets into your home

Almost nothing about an insurance claim is under your control. The first two days are the exception, and what you do in them decides how the next three months go.

The 48 hours at a glance

The rest of this page takes each of those in turn. If the water is not from a pipe, the first move changes — skip straight there.

Once the water is stopped and the drying has started, making the claim sets out what to send and the deadlines the Code of Practice puts on your insurer.

Hour one: stop it, and photograph it while it is still happening

1. Isolate the water. The mains tap at the meter, or the isolating valve under the fixture. For a hot water unit, the isolating valve on the cold inlet. If you do not know where your mains tap is, find it now rather than at 3am.
2. Photograph before you touch anything. The source, the spread, the water line on the walls, the ceiling, under the furniture, inside the cupboard. Use video as well — it timestamps itself and it captures the sound of running water, which is evidence of duration.
3. Turn off power to affected circuits if water is anywhere near outlets, switchboards or downlights. A wet ceiling with downlights in it is the single most dangerous thing in a domestic water event.
4. Get the source fixed and get the invoice itemised. The plumber’s report is the document that decides whether reg 19(1)(a)(vi) or reg 19(2)(b) governs. Ask them to write down what failed and how long it looks like it had been failing.

Hour two to twelve: the duty to mitigate

Every Australian home policy carries a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent further loss after an insured event. This is not an obscure clause; it is standard, it is in your policy, and it cuts in your favour more often than against you — because it means you do not have to sit and watch the subfloor rot while you wait for an assessor.

Reasonable steps after water damage:

• Lift rugs and move furniture off wet carpet. Timber furniture on wet wool carpet transfers stain within hours and the stain does not come out.
• Remove standing water. A wet vacuum is fine; a professional extraction unit is far better and is the first thing a restorer does.
• Open up and get air moving, unless the water was contaminated — in which case the opposite is true and you want containment, not circulation.
• Get a restoration company in to start extraction and set equipment. This is a reasonable step, it is what the policy contemplates, and the invoice forms part of the claim.

What is not a reasonable step: demolition, cutting out plasterboard, stripping cabinetry, or anything that destroys evidence of the cause. Stabilise, do not rebuild.

What not to throw out

The instinct after a flood is to get the ruined things out of the house. Resist it for 24 hours, and when you cannot:

• Photograph every item, with something in frame for scale, before it leaves.
• Keep a written list as you go. Reconstructing it a fortnight later from memory is how people under-claim.
• Keep a sample. A 300mm square of the carpet and underlay tells an assessor the quality and the construction. The skip does not. What to expect from the assessor covers the visit itself.
• Keep the failed part. The burst hose, the split fitting, the corroded elbow. It is the physical evidence of which provision applies and plumbers routinely take it away.

The exception is anything contaminated. NSW Health, Mould factsheet: NSW Health’s position is that absorbent materials such as carpet may need to be professionally cleaned or replaced once mould-contaminated. Sewage and flood water are Category 3 and porous materials that have been in them are generally removed rather than dried. Document thoroughly, then dispose.

Day one: lodge, even if you are not sure

Lodging costs nothing and starts the clock.

Lodge even if you think the excess makes it not worth claiming, and even if you are not sure the cause is covered. You can withdraw a claim. You cannot retroactively start a timeframe.

What to have ready when you lodge: the address, the policy number, when it started, when it stopped, what you think the cause was, what you have already done to mitigate, and whether anyone is living there. That last one matters more than it sounds — if the home is uninhabitable, temporary accommodation benefits are a separate part of most policies and they are not paid unless claimed.

If you need money now

This is the most useful paragraph in the Code for anyone whose house has just become uninhabitable, and it is the least known. Two things it requires of the insurer where you demonstrate urgent financial need: fast-track both the assessment and the decision process, and pay an advance amount within five business days.

“Demonstrate” is doing work in that sentence. Say specifically what the urgent need is — accommodation tonight, replacing a fridge full of food, a bond on a short-term rental — and say it in writing.

If it is not a burst pipe, the first move changes

Everything above assumes clean water from a failed fitting. Five other sources change the very first thing you do, and getting it wrong costs more than getting it late.

Sewage or a drain overflow

Do not get air moving. Moving contaminated air around a house spreads the problem; close the affected rooms off and ventilate to outside if you can. This is Category 3 from the first minute and porous materials will be removed rather than dried. What changes with sewage.

Flood water from outside

Power off at the board before anyone walks through standing water, and treat it as Category 3. Your State Emergency Service responds to flood and storm; a restoration company does not replace them. Before you lodge, establish where the water came from — whether it is legally a flood decides whether flood cover is even in play.

Rain through a storm-damaged roof

Get the roof covered first; drying a ceiling that is still taking water is money spent twice. Photograph the roof damage itself, because the argument will be whether the storm caused it or the roof was already failing. Reading a ceiling stain.

A hot water system

Close the cold water inlet valve at the top of the unit, then the dedicated circuit or the gas. Photograph the compliance plate before the plumber takes the unit away — its date is the fact the wear-and-tear argument turns on. Hot water failures.

Anything in an apartment

Extract inside your own lot without waiting; notify the strata manager the same day; and photograph the failed component, because in strata it decides which of two policies answers. Strata: two policies, one leak.

A house nobody has been living in

Write down, now, when somebody was last there and how often. Sixty-one continuous days of vacancy removes the burst pipe event from standard cover, and occupancy is a question of fact decided by records. Which four events drop on day 61.

By the end of 48 hours

If the first two days went well, you should have all of this:

1. Photographs and video of the cause, the spread and every damaged item.
2. A plumber’s or roofer’s written report saying what failed and when.
3. The failed component itself, in a bag, in the shed.
4. A claim lodged, with a reference number and the date.
5. Extraction done and drying equipment running, with a written scope from the restoration company.
6. A note of who you spoke to, when, and what they said. Every conversation.
7. If you needed it, a request for an advance payment, in writing.

The seventh one is the one people skip and later wish they had not.

From here: what the drying costs on published rates, so the first invoice is checkable; what your policy calls it, so the claim is lodged under the right event; and, if the answer comes back as a no, what to check in the decline letter.

Common questions