Melting Spot

As the spring thaw brings with it the need to deal with basement flooding and ice damming, some insurance executives in Western Canada recommend that brokers advise homeowners to keep their roofs clear and their attics cool, as well as warn prospective home insurance clients of potential coverage gaps in policies.

In Saskatchewan, property owners tend to get a build-up of snow around their foundations during the winter, reports Jim Seip, president of the Insurance Brokers’ Association of Saskatchewan (IBAS).

By day, Seip is sales manager at Life Line General Insurance Inc., a Saskatoon-based brokerage whose homeowner clients are advised to move snow away from foundations as a preventive measure. “We are having a record year for waterline breaks in Saskatoon this year,” he says. “We had a record cold winter, so it drove the frost deep in the ground.”

On March 20, the City of Saskatoon reported on its website that this year, the ground frost extended down to the level of underground pipes.

“Each time the temperature changes significantly, the frost level can move, putting pressure on the pipes causing them to shift,” the information notes. “If there is already a weak spot in the pipe, caused by age, corrosion or previous work, it can break.”

When watermains break, Seip adds, “you get a massive flood of water, and that enters the house and causes damage as well.” Four years ago, the city had “a massive amount of sewer back-up” resulting from the spring thaw, he reports.

“There is an ongoing water issue here in Saskatoon and insurance companies are adjusting their policies to deal with it,” Seip suggests.

Citing higher deductibles and higher premiums for sewer back-up in certain areas, he says carriers “have been getting much more detailed with regard to sewer back-up losses and assessing premiums and deductibles based on that, and requiring sewer back-up valves and things like that.”

BACKWATER VALVES MANDATORY

Over the last couple of decades, the City of Saskatoon has imposed new requirements on homebuilders. All homes constructed after January 1, 2004 must have “a weeping tile system that diverts water into a sump pit inside the basement,” notes information from the city.

The city has further required “backflow prevention devices” in all new homes since February 1, 1997. “You do not want to be the only one on your block to not have a sewer backwater valve,” Seip cautions. “If you are, you are going to have a fountain in your basement.”

Even where backwater valves are not mandatory, he recommends homeowners install them.

“I see, on a daily basis, the damage that sewer back-up causes,” says Seip. “I always tell people it’s the second worse claim you want to have. The worst is fire, of course.”

TOP CONCERNS

However, the spring thaw offers more than concern for what happens down below in basements; there is also concern about what happens above, namely ice damming.

This phenomenon is “one of the most common sources of roof damage,” the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) warns. In its report, Protect Your Home from Snow & Ice Storms, ICLR defines an ice dam as “a ridge of ice that develops at the edge of your roof or around drains that prevents snow or water from melting off your roof.”

Seip reports that one such ice dam in Saskatchewan recently cost an insurance carrier $13,000 on a homeowner claim. “That’s a lot of roof, so it can be a fairly disastrous hit to your pocketbook.”

ICLR cautions that if snow melts on the roof of a home, water can run down toward the edge and then freeze after coming into contact with eavestroughs that are colder than the roof.

“As the ice forms, water trying to drain down the roof will build up behind the ‘dam’ and potentially leak into walls, ceilings or your attic,” the ICLR report notes. “This water may cause rot in the roof that leads to collapse. In addition, the ‘dam’ also limits snow from falling off your roof, which can add to existing snow loads and put pressure on the structure of your home.”

TRAPPED MOISTURE

Damage can be extensive, restoration contractor Paul Davis Systems Canada Ltd. states in a newsletter posted on the company’s website. Losses can include delaminated or rotted roof decking, and damaged and/or dislodged shingles or shakes. Inside the home, the newsletter notes, potential losses include stained, sagging walls or ceiling drywall, and wet insulation.

“The worst effects of ice dams are often hidden, caused by moisture trapped inside walls or floors.”

Seip relays that the winter of 2012-2013 “was probably our worst year in my memory for ice damming” in the Saskatoon area.

“That was a bad year all around because we had double the normal snowfall,” he says, reporting that his brokerage alone handled in excess of 50 ice damming claims last year in Saskatoon alone.

“There are probably 10 to 15 insurance brokers in Saskatoon so you can imagine the claim volumes, just in ice damming,” he recounts. “In the 15 years before that, I never had an ice damming claim,” he adds.

In British Columbia, ice damming is “typically restricted to our northern areas where the weather is more severe and where the snow load and temperatures are more severe,” reports Greg McGill, senior vice president, British Columbia for Western Financial Group Inc.

Describing what staff for Western Financial’s broker network tell homeowner clients, McGill says that “we certainly try to be proactive with our clients and suggest they clean up their gutters in the fall, which will allow their melt to be more effective, and also to clean their roof off during the course of the winter to keep the amount and the volume of snow melt down.”

Manual ice removal, ICLR points out, is “extremely dangerous and should be done by a professional.”

INSULATE FIXTURES

One preventive measure that can be taken, Seip advises, is for homeowners to improve the ventilation in their attics. “That way, it keeps the attic cool and you are not going to get that constant freeze-thaw,” he explains.

ICLR advises homeowners to insulate incandescent light fixtures in the ceiling below the attic, which “can often generate enough heat to melt snow on a roof.”

Seip is not aware of any carriers charging higher premiums for ice damming. That said, he says he does advise clients up front that losses related to floods from natural sources of water are “virtually never covered” in homeowner policies.

“That’s something that the broker has to advise the client of, at the time of the purchase,” he emphasizes.

“If they do that, they can protect themselves from some grief down the line, rather than explain at the time of the loss that, ‘Hey, there is no coverage for this,'” Seip says.

“There may be other exposures that are not available, depending on the individual client,” McGill notes. “The best advice we have is to come in and speak with one of our insurance professionals to match the client’s needs to the appropriate carrier,” he adds.