To claim or not to claim

A question about : To claim or not to claim

I am looking for some advice please, especially if you work for an insurance company.

We got hit yesterday by the heavy rain and our utility attached to the side of the house was flooded. The room is approx 4 metres by 7 metres and a triangle shape.

It had a good couple of inches in there and I appreciate it could have been worse. However the lino is no good, furniture is knackered and potentially the washing machine and freezer might be no good either as they smell of water and cat pee.

DH gutted it today and stored everything worth saving in the garage and dumped the furniture out there too. Unfortunately I didn't have time to take picture of the water at its worse, but DH did take pictures during the clean up process.

Its probably going to be at least a Ј3,000 claim possibly more, but we are unsure whether to or not as we might be labelled flood risk. It wasn't a river or stream which got us, just an exceptionally large amount of rain running down our drive towards the house. The utility is a step down to the rest of the house, which fortunately is ok.

DH only said the other day it might be worth installing a gulley by the driveway in case of heavy rain, then 2 days later it happens.

Our dilemna is:-

1) Should we claim what we need to and say to the insurance company we are not in a flood risk area it was just circumstances and to prevent it happening again, we are going to install a rainwater gulley. But risk the premiums going sky high and getting labelled.

2) Not claim and try to do the best we can, with what we got saved up but it won't be as it was.

We do not live near a river and are on top of a hill, so it is the driveway that caused the problem not the situation of our house.

We would appreciate some advice as with a 8 month old and another on the way we don't know what to do.

Thanks a lot,

Bay

Best answers:

• Claim for sure. The costs will run into many thousands of pounds.
  The weather has been exceptional over the last few months and im sure this one incident will have minimal impact on your insurance - if any.
  We have seen flooding in places that have never flooded before and i dont feel these areas will be deemed as a flood risk - its just down the exceptional amounts of rain falling over a small time.
  For the sake of you and your children make the claim - it should be a simple (ish!!!) process. FOr this amount they will send a loss adjuster (internal or external) to substantiate your claim and arrange repairs and replacement