House insurance claims - Can I claim for this?

[MsCorleone]

Recently we noticed a stain on the render of the front of our house, we thought it was from the tree in the garden.

Then the render fell off in a long piece and we noticed a really small pipe coming out above where this stain started. Water was constantly pouring out of this pipe which was a bout the diameter of a hose pipe and we had no idea where it was connected to.

Anyway after some investigations it appears to be connected to the clean water pipe which comes from the toilet cistern. The cistern is constantly draining and not holding the water. The plaster has been affected in the lounge and the wallpaper has fallen off. We didn't notice because the curtains cover this part of the wall.

We now need to re-render the house and paint it, fix the toilet cistern leak and re-plaster and decorate our lounge. We hae never claimed on our house insurance before in12 years. Can we claim for this leak?

You will need to check your policy but I think you can claim for the damage caused by the leak but not for repairing the cause of the damage (as the cause of the damage will be wear and tear which insurance policies do not cover).

That sounds ok, I think actually stopping the leak shouldn't be too costly unless we have to buy a completely new toilet which will probably mean a new bathroom suite

A ball valve in the cistern is easily changed.

If you change the old syphon for a modern flusher at the same time, it will also have an internal overflow that discharges into the WC pan, so the external overflow pipe is no longer required.

PigletJohn that sounds very technical, I'm going to go and say what you've said to my DH and pretend it's my idea

it could well be excluded because it is a "gradually operating cause". it also sounds like the water was escaping exactly as it should- the pipe was there to ensure that the water did escape out and not into your bathroom/loft. The fact that you didn't notice it is neither here nor there!

best of luck though, worth trying!

Aqua that's sort of right but a part in the toilet cistern has stopped working. This means that water is pouring out of the pipe constantly instead of it being a small amount every now and then.

I'm not feeling confident for a claim so thank you all for the luck

Oh and obviously name change