Home Insurance - Don’t Forget To Tell The Insurance Company If You’re Knocking Down Walls
An article from the Press Association tells us that Halifax Home Insurance have come up with some startling facts about home restoration projects. It seems that almost three million rooms have vanished over the past five years as homeowners knock down walls to create open-plan living space. An estimated 2.9 million rooms have been knocked into adjoining ones in the past five years, while plans are being made for a further 2.1 million homes to lose at least one room this year, according to the Halifax research.
The most popular wall to knock down is that between the dining room and the living room, with many people believing that the traditional dining room is part of a bygone era. The days of the whole family sitting around a dining table adorned with the best china whilst tucking into roast beef and yorkshire pudding seem to be gone for good. It seems that people now prefer the extra living space that joining the two rooms brings.
Estimations show that a further 590,000 dining rooms will be destroyed this year to create bigger kitchens or lounges and that the traditional standalone dining room could be extinct by 2020.
Larger living areas are also being created by knocking through the walls between living room and hallway or getting rid of utility rooms or studies to get bigger lounges, kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms.
The worrying point about all this alteration work is that one in four people are planning to knock down walls themselves rather than employ a tradesman. At the same time half of people who carry out work don’t realise that they have to inform their insurer that the number of rooms is about to change, and that failing to do so could invalidate their house insurance.
David Rochester, head of underwriting at Halifax Home Insurance, said: “Britons have clearly fallen for open-plan living and are looking at ways in which they can make better use of the space inside their homes. Not only do we urge homeowners to make sure a qualified person carries out any structural work to their home, we also recommend seeking the advice of a qualified structural engineer before progressing work to knock down any walls.”
We’ve all seen the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil gets in a local firm of cheap builders to knock down a wall, only to find that they’ve removed a major retaining wall and the whole place is likely to collapse at any moment. Nobody is suggesting that such a farce could take place in your home but insurance companies get hundreds of claims each year for collapsed ceilings etc that are the result of people taking down the “wrong” wall, and the insurance companies simply don’t pay out on those claims, so be warned.
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Tags: alteration, home insurance, home restoration, insurer, living space, qualified person, restoration projects, tradesman