You never want to come home one day to find your home inundated with sewage. Unfortunately, sewer backups are a part of life, and despite your best efforts to prevent them, they can still happen. It’s for this reason that sewer backup insurance exists.
If you’re not familiar with sewer backup insurance and what it covers, you might be tempted to dismiss it as just another expense. While this reaction is understandable, you should know a few things about this type of coverage before you decide, including what it is, what it covers, and the potential risks of going without it. With this knowledge, you’ll be in a position to make an informed decision about whether sewer backup insurance is worth it for you and your home.
What Is Sewer Backup Insurance?
Sewer backup insurance financially protects you against damage caused by water backing up into your home from sewers, floor drains, or septic tanks. In Canada, insurers typically offer it to homeowners, condo owners, and tenants as an optional coverage. This means that in order for any damages or losses caused by a sewer backup to be covered, you must have specifically added sewer backup insurance to your policy in advance of any incidents occurring.
Given that sewer backups can happen to anyone, regardless of whether you live in a single-family home in the country or a townhome in the city, sewer backup insurance is generally considered an important form of protection. It becomes even more so when you consider the typical causes of sewer backups, including:
- Aging pipes that crack or collapse over time
- The buildup of cooking oil, grease, and other substances poured down the drain
- The buildup of non-flushable items, including baby wipes, feminine hygiene products, paper towels, etc.
- Obstructions and damage caused by tree and shrub roots
- Heavy rainfall, flooding, and storms
- Earthquakes and other natural ground shifts
What Does Sewer Backup Insurance Cover?
When a sewer backup occurs, it often requires more than just cleanup and repairs. It can also lead to significant damage to your property and personal belongings. In severe cases, you might even need to temporarily relocate until your home is restored to a safe and livable condition. For this reason, sewer backup insurance typically covers:
- Replacement or repair of personal belongings damaged by the backup
- Professional cleanup and sanitation of contaminated areas
- Repairs the sewer lines that are on the property
- Repairs to the damaged parts of the property affected by sewage backup (ex. floors, walls, and ceilings)
- Additional living expenses and temporary housing if your home becomes uninhabitable due to the damage
Is Sewer Backup Insurance Worth It?
The average price of sewer backup insurance for homeowners ranges between $150 and 300 a year, or $12.50 to $25 extra a month. That’s enough to possibly make you think twice about adding it to your policy. But here’s why you shouldn’t decide whether sewer backup insurance is worth it or not based on the cost of coverage alone.
First and foremost, let us remind you that the sewage pipes that run from your property line to your home are your responsibility to maintain and repair, as needed. Therefore, if an issue lies between the curb and your doorstep, you alone are responsible for covering the costs of repairing both the pipes and any damage to your home and property.
This brings us to the cost of a sewer backup. Consider this: your immediate priority will likely be to clean up the mess, which will cost between $1,000 and $5,000 on average, or $7 per square foot, according to HomeGuide. Once the cleanup is out of the way, you’ll be left to fix the thing that caused the problem in the first place – the sewer lines. Service Experts, an Ontario-based plumbing company, estimates that these repairs can average around $4,400. In total, you could be facing thousands of dollars in expenses, including any damaged personal property that needs to be repaired or replaced as a result of the backup.
On top of this, many cities’ sewer systems are aging. As they do, sewer backups become more frequent for residents. Not to mention, old sewer systems were built for a different time, one where weather events and natural disasters were less severe than they are today.
As a Toronto Star article on the city’s flooding problem points out, “Rising temperatures that accompany climate change can add moisture to the air, increasing the odds of intense rainfall. But those heavy rains fall on Toronto neighbourhoods serviced by sewers built a century ago when the weather was, frankly, a lot more civilized. Nearly a quarter of Toronto has a single pipe carrying raw human sewage and stormwater — might have been sufficient in gentler times but is now overwhelmed by volatile storms.”
Considering the risk and financial impact of sewer backups, an additional $12 to $25 per month for coverage might seem like a modest price for peace of mind. Ultimately, though, whether or not this coverage is worth it is a decision only you can make.