One way to save on home insurance is to never have a water claim!

While most homeowner’s insurance policies cover water damage from freezing pipes, you really don’t want to have to file a claim. Many companies penalize you, thinking that you should have known better and kept it from happening. You wont save on home insurance by filing a water claim. Rack up two claims in a short period of time and I’m seeing the big national company’s non-renewing long time customers! With last summer’s fires, and the hail damage many insured’s received, a little common sense now can help save your home insurance! Back to back claims stand out big time now.

Snows coming folks! They’re calling for storms Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The highs are only supposed to be 32 degrees!

Time to get your home winterized if you haven’t already. Blow out the sprinklers, shut off and drain the hose bibs if you can, get all those areas where water pipes come close to the basement or exterior walls insulated real good! Click through to the article below for more ideas. You don’t want a water claim from a busted pipe! Double check the sprinkler feed where it exits your home that’s where most are vulnerable!

The Insurance Information Institute has more ideas here.

Take a look at those trees around your property; will a wet snow drag them down? Are all the leaves gone? If not, could a limb break and come crashing down on your new roof? You might want to get out the chain saw, or call the Arborist!

Do you know where your water shutoff valve is? Better to find it now than at 3 AM with the basement filling with water! When you do find it, give it a twist. If you haven’t shut it off in a while it could be stuck from disuse. Run it all the way closed and turns on a faucet to see if it shuts off the flow. Better safe than sorry!!

Above all keep you home warm. If it gets really cold and blizzardy, (Is that a word?) open up any cabinets under sinks on outer walls, and any closets that might have pipes behind them. When in doubt, let a little water drip out of the faucets. The movement will help keep it from freezing.

Then light a fire in the fireplace and sit back and enjoy our Colorado winter!

If you’re buying a new home and looking for home insurance, please call me at 303-688-5193 first!

With all the fires and the hail we’ve had in the state this summer it’s increasingly difficult to get home insurance on certain homes, in certain areas. Farm Bureau Insurance is great because our underwriters will actually look at the risk before they make a decision, but there are still some that won’t fly. I have a better chance of helping you with your home insurance than most of the national companies because we only write in Colorado. Most of the national insurers are switching to computerized software that use satellites, CAT maps and gradients; showing where the hail hit, what size, how many trees are in your yard, how much slope is on your property; and then just arbitrarily kicking you out as uninsurable. They are even doing this to their home insurance customers they’ve had for years!

Farm Bureau Insurance and I take a different path. With our local experience we know what works and what best practices are for Colorado. Our policies and approach to protect your assets are tailored to each individual insured and we really work hard to be sure you are getting the right coverage, no more or less than you really need. I visit all my insured’s properties, meet with the inspectors during the inspections if possible, to really get a feel for the property and try and ferret out any deficiencies, then go over them with you, before we decide on a course of action. There’s nothing more frustrating that getting a call from an insured, all excited about the closing of a new home, only to find out that their home insurance is going to be three or four times higher than they imagined, just because of a zip code! Call me first! You’ll be happy you did!