You wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of your fire alarm going off. You manage to get everyone out of your home, but most of your belongings don’t come out of the ordeal unscathed.
After the firefighters leave, it’s important to call your homeowner’s insurance company. They’ll send out a fire restoration service to do a damage assessment and take care of the smoke and soot damage. The best part?
Depending on your policy, you might not have to pay a single dime for it. We can tell you how much you should expect your insurance provider to cover. Check out this guide to learn more.
Debris Removal
A lot of the damage that comes from a house fire is the soot and other debris. While you may be able to save money by tackling this job yourself, you shouldn’t. Soot can be highly toxic, so it should only be left in the hands of the professionals at https://www.hcienv.com/emergency-chemical-spill-response.
The problem is that for many homeowners, that costs more money than they can afford. Will your insurance adjuster cover the cleanup of the debris?
The answer is yes. Your policy will take care of most of the cleanup process. Soot and smoke do tend to seep into everything. You may have to replace all your furniture and even parts of your home such as your insulation.
Depending on the level of the damage done, your policy might not handle all of it, but it’s better than having to pay the entire price out of your own pocket.
Dwelling Coverage
Insurance usually covers more than the damage done to the home by the fire. It will also take care of attached structures such as your garage.
In some cases, it’s impossible for you to inhabit your home while the restoration team is there cleaning up. It’s just not safe for you to be there.
You have no choice but to either go to a friend or family member’s house or book a hotel. If the latter happens, you might be able to get your money back for it. They may even be nice enough to handle your restaurant bills.
Detached Property
Let’s say that you leave a pot on your stove, which causes a fire to break out in your kitchen. This fire ends up spreading to your shed that’s technically detached from your house. Will your insurance pay to replace the structure?
Most policies will. Sheds, fences and other structures like it still count as part of your property. You’ll have to check the fine print to make sure that your insurance company will take care of it.
Personal Items
Personal property counts as anything that you own. If your couch gets destroyed in the fire, you may be able to get it replaced under your policy.
This includes your detached property as well. So, if you lose a bunch of things that you had stored in your shed, you’ll be able to get them replaced.
We will warn you that there are some limits to this. If you have priceless artwork and jewelry in your house when the fire breaks out, you may get some compensation to replace them, but there’s a good chance that you won’t get the full amount of what they’re worth.
Choosing Your Limits
When you’re opening up your policy, you’ll be the one to set your coverage limits. There’s no ballpark number to shoot for here, but there are a few things that you should keep in mind when you’re making your choice.
Take inventory of your belongings. Remember that if you have a bunch of expensive things, your coverage might not take care of them. If you want to get compensation for these things, you’ll have to shoot for a larger policy.
The next thing you need to think about is the value of your home. The thing about the housing market is that it tends to fluctuate. Your place might not be worth quite as much as it was when you first bought it.
That means it won’t be as expensive to rebuild or repair it. You don’t want to take out a larger policy than what you need, so this is something to look into.
Is There Damage That Homeowner’s Insurance Won’t Cover?
There is some damage that your homeowner’s insurance won’t take care of for you. For example, if a fire breaks out in your kitchen because you accidentally left a pan on your stove for too long, your insurance will most likely cover that. You didn’t mean to cause the fire.
If you were to intentionally light a match and throw it into your house, however, that’s a different story. Since you did that with the intention to set your house ablaze, you won’t get a dime from your provider.
If your home was set on fire due to some kind of act of war, you may not be able to get coverage for that either. You’ll have to check with your insurance company.
Let Your Insurance Help You Bounce Back From a House Fire
Having a house fire is one of the most devastating things that you can go through. You don’t want to have to worry about how you’re going to replace your possessions on top of everything else.
Let your homeowner’s insurance take care of it for you. Depending on your policy, you may be able to get most if not all of your things replaced and your house fixed up.
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