Home insurance on an unoccupied house

[irishmurdoch]

My mother died fairly recently and her house is still in probate, so it's empty for the foreseeable future. The home insurance policy that she had in place says that if the house is unoccupied the boiler needs to be permanently set to 13 degrees to avoid pipes bursting. This seems ridiculously high to me - I thought 5 degrees was the recommended cutoff?

The system runs on oil that I need to get delivered in tanks, so it won't be long before I'm bankrupt if go with 13 degrees!

This is a naughty question, so go ahead and pillory me for asking it, but in the event of a leak, how would the insurer know whether the system was set to 13 degrees or 5 degrees?

I’d be very careful. They send round loss adjusters and it’s getting difficult to obtain payouts for legitimate reasons so they are likely to play hardball if they suspect anything. I’m no expert but I imagine they’d be looking for telltale signs of cold temperature. I was in your situation when my brother was sectioned then went into a mental health rehab place and was away from home for 18months. In the end I didn’t insure as it would have been so expensive. I went over there, turned water pipes off etc and kept an eye on the place every month or so.

I think 13C is pretty sensible TBH. They thermostat on the wall in the hallway or the middle of the house may sit at 13C but there will be much colder posts - not every place in the house still sit at 13C - hopefully 13C at the thermostat ensures that nowhere, where there are water pipes, gets down to about 5C. Consider the loft, which probably had dinner incision in it - this prevents heat loss from the rooms below but is also the reason why any pipes in the loft, from a header tank, for instance, could become very cold and possibly freeze.

Your insurance will probably ask that someone goes in at least once a week to remove post and check on the place.

I was in this situation in 2021 with my aunt's house 4.5hrs (250 miles) away. Fortunately, she had a long standing next door neighbour and friend who agreed to check on the post and the house for us and to make sure the heating hadn't failed - we paid her for this too. We had an incident where a tree in the back garden blue down and luckily, it just missed the conservatory - sh¡t happens! The neighbour was an absolute godsend and helped oversee the removal of that, the window/gutter cleaning, gardener, taking meter readings, etc.

I found it tricky to get unoccupied house insurance - especially after the end of the first year of unoccupancy as the probate took 4 months from submission of forms (this was when the HMRC were overstretched due to COVID deaths) and the house sale took 8.5 months from agreeing the sale to completion.

I had insurance through Towergate ~£600 for the year. Here is some of the small print.

20. INCREASED ESCAPE OF WATER EXCESS Cover in respect of Escape of Water (Peril 6 Buildings and Peril 6 Contents) is excluded unless the water supply is turned off at the internal stop cock where the water enters the Home and all water tanks and pipes to the domestic water installation, washing machines or dishwashers are drained. An Escape of Water Excess of £1,000 will apply in this instance. If the water is to be left on to operate a thermostatically controlled fixed heating system, the heating must be maintained at a minimum temperature of 58°F (15°C) at all times (24 hours). An Escape of Water Excess of £2,500 will apply in this instance. This wording supersedes Paragraph ii) of Endorsement 21ʹUnoccupancy Condition.
21. UNOCCUPANCY CLAUSE (i) It is a condition precedent to Our liability under this policy that the Home is inspected internally and externally at least once every 7 days by Your representative and that all mail, newspapers, flyers and such are removed from the Home and that the Building and gardens of the Home are suitably maintained in good condition. Section 1ʹBuildings and Section 2ʹContents exclude peril 6 Escape of Water unless: (ii) the water, gas and electricity supplies are turned off at the mains (and for the period November to March inclusive all water tanks, pipes and apparatus are drained) unless required to operate an automatically operated central heating system used to maintain a minimum temperature of 58F (15C) at all times.

I wouldn't try and be too clever and turn the heating down to 5C FWIW.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed answer. What you've both said makes a lot of sense. My other option is to drain the system, so that might save us on the oil, but as the house is in Ireland, it's a bit tricky. My mother's next-door neighbour has been great about things like collecting post but she's 75, so I don't think I can ask her to get her spanners out! I'll probably have to fly over to sort it out, but will get her to set the system to 13 in the mean time.

Have you spoken to the insurance company? We had to change the name and take out a new insurance policy before probate was granted or the insurance would have been invalid.

Also, the house will likely not go under 13 degrees all that often. We have oil heating and to get it to that heat will not cost or use a lot at all.

When we had empty home ins it had to be set to 16 deg and the house had to be inspected weekly. If we wanted to make a claim you need to prove that someone was in the house to a weekly schedule so we used Ring cameras.

Presumably they will know that the house was too cold if you are trying to claim for things that were ruined by damp. Most things should dry out.

At 13c the heating will probably won’t even come on until it’s really cold and then only for a few hours a day so I don’t see how it would bankrupt you.

If you set it to 5c over the whole winter the inside will start to deteriorate. Luckily Ireland doesn’t get that cold but it’s damp!

Yes, it's in Ireland so probate takes forever - my mother's insurance broker has switched it to a policy for holiday homes that covers us in the mean time.

Thanks, these are all things I was wondering about. Have never had to worry about an empty house before!

Oh that's good then. We're England but probate took 11months here!! Apparently that's unusual as there was a backlog, but it seemed a ridiculously long time.

That's mad! How did people prove that before the existence of Ring cameras?

@irishmurdoch We had this in the uk. I changed insurance, as you have. We kept the heating above 10 degrees so 13 seems reasonable. We also got post diverted to me. Is there any service in Ireland that could do this for you? Any relatives in Ireland who could receive it? It’s very difficult to manage all this from afar. Wish you well.

@irishmurdoch maybe a sign in sheet of some sort?
we also had to get a special clause or something because we had a water storage tank thing in the loftspace, a water leak sensor on the stop cock and we had cameras covering every cm2 of our property. It is worth talking it through with one of these companies, it was an hour on the phone but well worth it.

Other things that helped was smart lighting that turned on and off in certain rooms in the evenigs as if someone was home, smart fire alarms that came straight to our phones and talking to the local police community officer who tagged the house in their system (no idea how it works) as unoccupied. We also asked a trusty neighbour who would never be a CF to use our driveway so there was some comings and goings.

An oil boiler would often have 2 thermostats, as they are normally outside, so would normally have a frost protection thermostat and the house thermostat.
13 degrees is fine for the house, it wont come on much and it won't be costing you anything unless you have to buy more oil. Any idea how much is currently in the tank? For comparison ours is set to 15 degrees and will come on very occasionally overnight. The frost protection stat next to the boiler is set to 7 I think. We don't touch that one, the service engineer checks it annually and that's that. You won't be needing hot water in the house either so I'd be checking the timings of that too and making sure that it's set to the minimum required to keep it working and free of legionnaires. Your hot water system may also run off the oil boiler or it could be electric.

I had a similar clause in mine. I don’t think it’s so much proving you were there but rather in the instance of a claim, could you prove that the amount of damage happened in a week.

For example, if there was a leak and mould had grown everywhere you couldn’t really claim it wasn’t like that a week ago. Or a small leak dripping through the ceiling might cause a puddle but it wouldn’t destroy the entire floor in a week.

"I had a similar clause in mine. I don’t think it’s so much proving you were there but rather in the instance of a claim, could you prove that the amount of damage happened in a week.

For example, if there was a leak and mould had grown everywhere you couldn’t really claim it wasn’t like that a week ago. Or a small leak dripping through the ceiling might cause a puddle but it wouldn’t destroy the entire floor in a week."

I see what you mean now! Thanks for the patient explanation :)

Do you have property guardians where you are?

With DF's house, I used a specialist insurer, and.drained the water, and kept my fingers crossed.
It's v stressful, am sorry for your loss.

Draining water from a heating system is not a great idea. If it’s electric radiators it won’t matter but if the heating needs to be on via a wet system, so be it.

I did wonder if draining the system would just be the simplest way of doing it, but having taken on board what other posters are saying about damp, I think it's best to keep the heating set to 13. The house is on the coast, so damp could be a big issue!

If you need to sell, you don’t want a damp smelling house.

Surely the home insurance policy she had in place is no longer valid if she has died. A dead person can't insure anything.

It's now in the name of 'Reps of the Late Mrs X' during probate, i.e. her executors.

We updated the policy when it expired but told the insurers DM had died. So in effect you get some thinking time.