When earth, wind, fire and water show up on your doorstep — either one at a time or in a group — they can really do a job on your house and your peace of mind.
The damage they can cause can simply be an annoyance. The bathtub is overdue for caulking, but you can’t get to it. So water drips into the uncaulked joint around the bathtub and finds its way to the living-room ceiling, which develops a rusty stain. That turns a simple caulking job into a major weekend repair project.
The damage can reach epic proportions, requiring family dislocation, major reconstruction and insurance-company involvement. A tree topples onto the roof. Soot in the chimney catches fire and burns the house down. Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, mud slides — the list goes on.
While the big disasters can be nightmares, the small ones — involving only a few hundred dollars in damage — can also take a toll on your nerves and throw homeowners on a limited budget into a tailspin.
If you have two or three small problems in a period of five years and make claims for them on your homeowners’ policy, many insurers will impose a surcharge that will raise your annual premiums by hundreds of dollars.
Disasters typically have three major origins: natural causes, poor maintenance and plain forgetfulness.
Natural causes aren’t necessarily as dramatic as hurricanes or tornadoes. For example, a line of severe thunderstorms announces the arrival of a cold front in late August. During the 10-minute storm, lightning strikes the cable that brings telephone service into the house.
The electrical charge follows the cable and knocks out telephone service. But it also finds its way into the basement, fusing wires in the burglar-alarm panel. In addition, someone has left the computer modem connected to the phone line. There goes the hard drive.
Cost: $550 to replace the burglar alarm, $150 for the hard drive. Homeowners’ insurance pays all but the $250 deductible.
What about forgetfulness?
“In the winter, people often forget to turn off the water to the outside faucet or the unheated garage,” said Gary G. Schaal, vice president of sales and marketing for Orleans Corp. builders in Bensalem. “Then, when cold weather comes, the lines freeze and burst, and the garage fills with water.
“We get calls almost every year from people who bought houses from us years ago asking why. When you ask them if they turned off the water, they’ll usually reply, `Oh, was I supposed to do that?”‘
The majority of disasters large and small can easily be attributed to poor or deferred maintenance.
“Dripping faucets are an annoyance, but the water that’s lost can easily add $10 to your monthly water bill,” Schaal said. “Caulk around windows tends to dry out after three or four years and needs to be replaced. Otherwise, moisture will get in and rot out sills.”
But that’s minor when you consider what deferred maintenance can do to household electrical systems. Many older houses aren’t designed to handle all of our newfangled appliances. That’s why, when you use the hair dryer and make toast at the same time, you can blow a fuse or trip a circuit breaker.
Every house that was built at or before the turn of the century has four generations of wiring, according to Joe Farrington, an Oreland electrician. What causes problems is perpetually tapping off the existing wiring to meet new needs without upgrading the system.
In analyzing a home’s system, an electrician should make sure that all the branch circuits are in good shape and that all splices have been made properly — generally, that there are no problems with anything that can be seen.
The biggest problem electricians face, Farrington said, is wiring that has been maintained by a homeowner rather than by a licensed electrician. Most fires can be traced to poor maintenance of wiring.
When there is a fire or other major disaster, someone such as Jim Mellon is usually the first one on the scene after emergency personnel have departed.
Mellon, president of Mellon Certified Restorations, of Yeadon, doesn’t have a pleasant job. You meet him only when your house or factory has been devastated by fire, flood, wind or vandals.
Usually sent by an insurance company, he examines every square foot of your damaged property. Then he figures out what it will take to get the soot out of your computers and draperies, or the mud out of your carpet.
And, if you have insurance, he tells you how much the company will be willing to compensate you.
Because of what he does, and the state of mind of the people he deals with, Mellon has developed a “bedside manner.”
“Emotion is a big part of the job,” he said. “You’re not dealing with a homeowner who wants to remodel his house. You are dealing with people whose house has been burned or flooded.”
Once he has dealt with the homeowner, he gets down to the nitty-gritty.
“After a fire, there’s the smell, and unless you find the source, the odor can linger forever,” Mellon said. “Smoke and soot migrate to colder areas — outside walls, in duct chassis, ceiling cavities and behind partition walls. Even if you have a small fire, soot will deposit itself behind draperies, and the odor remains.”
Soot accumulates uniformly on walls, so finely and evenly sometimes that you cannot tell it is there.
“A lot of people try to clean soot with soap and water, and end up ruining the paint job on the wall,” he said. “Soot embeds itself in flat paint. It’s easier to remove if the surface is gloss.”
When there’s water damage to deal with, Mellon’s main task is trying to inhibit mold growth. He uses meters to test for water content in insulation, drywall and wood floors.
Drywall soaks up water like a sponge, but often the water is behind the wall. To deal with it, Mellon removes the baseboard, then cuts holes in the area behind the baseboard and forces air into the wall to dry it out.
Some insurance companies react to disaster more quickly than others, but Mellon said many insurance agents realized that rapid remedial action could make the difference in the ultimate price of cleanup and repairs.
Winter seems to heighten concerns about home disasters. And small wonder. If the compressor for the air conditioner gives up the ghost on the first day of summer, the worst that will happen is that you’ll sweat a lot till the repair person shows.
If your furnace dies on the first below-freezing day of winter, your pipes can freeze and burst. If it snows 36 inches, it may be several days before repair people can reach you.
If the roof leaks in a spring rainstorm, you have several months to call the roofer and get it fixed. If there is ice damming on your roof in January, a roofer may not be willing to risk his life to climb up there — and neither should you.
If you have even the slightest concern that a potentially serious situation exists in your home, now is the time to check it out.
First identify the problem. Then find the appropriate repair person. Obtain a recommendation from friends or neighbors, or go to sources such as a contractors’ network which will recommend only qualified repair people who meet the network’s standards. Then – Get two or three names, and obtain estimates. And remember, the lowest bidder is not necessarily the best choice.
Have heating and cooling systems routinely checked.
Check your insurance coverage, and find out how much it would cost to rebuild your home. Your insurer can calculate those costs, or you can hire an appraiser to do it.
You also should consider replacement-cost insurance for your possessions. A replacement-cost policy pays the dollar amount needed to replace a damaged item with one of similar kind and quality without deductions for depreciation. An actual-cash-value policy pays the amount needed to replace the item, minus depreciation.
Finally, make a list of personal property, and photograph or videotape items and rooms, putting the prints in a safety deposit box.
