Spontaneous failure of toilet tank...

[nauticalmike]

Originally Posted by SoFla

I only had carpet that needed to be dried and re-streatched after the flood. Hardly enough to cover the deductible. On the other hand, a friend had a major flood from a running toilet. She got $20,000 to replace what got ruined on closet floors, laminate floor, and a few inches of baseboard that showed signs of mold. How you handle it depends on the amount of damage.

Ya that's kind of what I'm thinking too. It is mostly laminate flooring that was damaged and I'm kinda worried about them raising my rates etc if I make a claim. Also this house is already lost to me through foreclosure and it is only a matter of time before they take it away from me anyway. So maybe I'll just dry it as best as I can and then just leave it alone...

[triumph]

You may want to consider a potential secondary disaster of widespread mold if you don't let the insurance company in on the solution.
In my experience they handle the whole thing from clean-up to repair - they didn't raise my rates - that's why one pays for home insurance.
I would worry that someone who purchases the home later may think of suing if the home is found to be full of hidden mold that was not addressed.
Sorry to hear of the rotten luck, but it's fixable.

[nauticalmike]

I'm really not too concerned about anyone else trying to sue me because I've got nothing and don't expect to ever have anything due to my SCI's having rendered me pretty much useless. However, now that things have been drying up more, I an see that the damage to the house is more extensive than I had expected initially, so I am thinking that come Monday I will contact them insurance company to see what they have to say.

[SoFla]

You really have nothing to lose by calling insurance. They can't raise the rate if you don't own the house.

[roc21]

A 44 yr old toilet!!..jezz..... I had a flood from toilet... seal broke around where water enters tank... happened over night while sleeping.. i woke up early and heard water runnning... got up and squishh! ankle deep! bathroom on other side of liv rm from master.. half my bdrm soaked(carpet)..living rm soaked(carpet)..both guest rms soaked(tile).. called a co. they came out, sucked up all the water, lifted the carpets in few areas and put blowers to dry out-ran for 2 days.they sprayed anti mold stuff. insurance came out days later i got $ to cover clean up /carpet dry plus bedroom furniture had water mark/damage on bottom 2-3 inches(burrow/armoire/bed/etc) and they paid me for furniture. dont remember exact but ended up getting about 8k. you better hope you have flood coverage

[nauticalmike]

Originally Posted by roc21

A 44 yr old toilet!!..jezz..... I had a flood from toilet... seal broke around where water enters tank... happened over night while sleeping.. i woke up early and heard water runnning... got up and squishh! ankle deep! bathroom on other side of liv rm from master.. half my bdrm soaked(carpet)..living rm soaked(carpet)..both guest rms soaked(tile).. called a co. they came out, sucked up all the water, lifted the carpets in few areas and put blowers to dry out-ran for 2 days.they sprayed anti mold stuff. insurance came out days later i got $ to cover clean up /carpet dry plus bedroom furniture had water mark/damage on bottom 2-3 inches(burrow/armoire/bed/etc) and they paid me for furniture. dont remember exact but ended up getting about 8k. you better hope you have flood coverage

Fortunately there is a an access into the crawl space under my haouse that allowed a lot of the water to drain out and prevented it from getting more than about an inch deep.

[nauticalmike]

Actually I just looked at the date of manufacture closer and it says Oct 3 1986, not 1966 as I thought previously.

[nauticalmike]

So anyway I went ahead and called my insurance company on the Monday one week following my flood was transferred to someones voice mail and left a message. No response. Called agin on Tuesday same thing transferred to voicemail so I left another message. Never received call back. Finally On Friday I tried again and this time when transferred someone answered the call and I reported the incident to them and was instructed to call a flood remediation company to come out and dry up water. the clean up company shows up and apparently they are very busy this day so all they do is leave some dehumidifying units and take moisture readings throughout house then leave. That was Saturday. Sunday they came back and removed one of the baseboards and they saw mold beginning to grow so they immediately stopped and taped baseboard back in place. The insurance companies adjuster was also present at this time and he basically explained the procedure to me of how they catalogue everything in the house and them remove it to storage while they tear up all of the flooring to allow the subfloor to dry out and cut out all the the damp drywall and then allow everything to dry out They also made me an appt for their mold guy to meet with me on Wednesday of the coming week. I get a call wednesday around 3 o-clock and they tell me that the Mold guy somehow overlooked me and that he could meet with me on Friday. Since I had a prior commitment I had to put off the Meeting until the following Monday. I met with him on Monday he looked around briefly at which time I had to inform him that my insurance had a mold exclusion so if they had to big deal the shit out of it and come in with haz mat suits and clean up any mold before they would even begin doing any sort of remediation then unfortunately it was unlikely that they would be doing any further work because as an unemployed paraplegic it is financially impossible for me to pay out thousands of dollars to have them eliminate all of the mold that is undoubtedly growing under every square inch of the floors and approximately the lower 2 feet of the drywall throughout my house. Since by this time with all of the delays it has been over 4 weeks since the original flood mold has had plenty of time to get growing. At that time the mold guy told me that he would speak with the man that had set up the dehumidifiers and found the mold to come up with some way to at least replace my flooring because they couldn't just leave without at least repairing the Laminate flooring which got all messed up by the water. I said that would be awesome if they could do that. He was supposed to call me later that day. He didn't although I was informed the following day which was last tuesday that he was working out the details with the Insurance company to do the work. Finally yesterday he called and left me a message saying they needed to make an appt to come pick up their equipment. So if memory is serving me correctly it has been over six weeks since the flooding occurred and Essentially nothing was ever done and although I didn't return the call from them yet, from the tone of his voice and the way he spoke I'm fairly certain that he is going to tell me that unless I can come up with several thousand dollars for them to come out in hazmat suits and remove everything that has molded over the last six weeks from the flooding that it's game over and I will be left with a very damaged floor and a house with one hell of a mold infestation problem that may also cause health problems for me.

Although I would never even consider actually doing it I'll bet that others have probably decided to kill their mold with fire under similar circumstances. Insurance covers fire, fire kills mold seems like the obvious solution to me. Although I also have no doubt that if my house did happen to get destroyed in a fire that the insurance company would be over the place with a fine toothed comb to be sure that it was not arson. what's more if it didn't burn down completely then they would already know of the mold and they would stop work and then I would have no roof over my head at all. Anyone know how to keep fire department from putting out a house fire in a residential neighborhood? Ok so maybe fire wouldn't work after all. Oh well...

[MSspouse]

Originally Posted by nauticalmike

... this house is already lost to me through foreclosure and it is only a matter of time before they take it away from me anyway...

I'd spend your time and money looking for a new place to live then.

[nauticalmike]

I am going to file bankruptcy the day they finally decide to sell it and thaat will but me another year or so. I will begin worrying then