Heat pumps and home insurance. Are you insured?
Our home insurance policy has an actual exclusion for heat pumps - they aren't covered if something goes. Oil and gas boiler, no problem, it's covered.
Does your home insurance cover your heat pump?
Please let me know, because we might be able to escalate this matter and get this changed. If there's something confidential you don't want to post publicly, please drop me a DM.
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@editor, No exclusions in my policy except this, which seems reasonable to me:
"for loss or damage to swimming pools, hot
tubs, tennis courts, service tanks, central
heating oil tanks, ground source heating
pumps, terraces, paths, drives, walls, fences,
gates and hedges unless your home is
damaged by the same cause and at the
same time.
It's a bit concerning if policies are carving out general liabilities for heat pumps.
My insurance with NFU
What is insured
Main heating system
The total failure, complete breakdown whether
or not caused by accidental DAMAGE, to the
main heating system (including all radiators,
hot water pipes and water storage tanks) in
YOUR HOME.
What is not insured
YOU are not insured for any claim arising from or
relating to:
• DAMAGE caused by any gradual process;
• warm air and solar heating systems or boilers
with an output over 60Kw/hr.
Hope that helps
I've attached the exclusion in our home emergency policy - it excludes ground, water and air source systems (section r, vii) , but oil and gas fired boilers are covered.
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@hmk, I assume you have a heat pump. I guess many farmers have heat pumps these days, so I would hope that the NFU would cover this. It would still be interesting if they had qualified engineers to fall back on in remote locations of a heat pump did fail or stop working.
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Now that we have more users on the forums I wanted to bump this topic and see who else has home insurance that covers or excludes heat pumps.
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@editor I had Admiral Gold home insurance they state:
Boiler Emergency cover
If your boiler or heating system completely breaks down, or you have no hot water, we will arrange and pay for emergency work to be carried out to make a temporary repair of the damage. This section covers two claims per period of insurance, each with a claim limit of up to £500.
They then go on to say
Heating system defined as
"The main form of heating in your home, either central heating or other forms of heating such as renewable technologies, liquid petroleum gas (LPG), oil, solid fuel, electric boiler and solar power"
However further down they then state under what's not covered
"Repairing or replacing underfloor heating, warm air units, air- or ground-source heat pumps, and gas appliances..."
The whole thing doesn't make sense to me. They state that they class a heating system as renewables and that they'll cover them and in the next breath exclude renewables
We have a Halifax Home Emergency Policy, which states that we are covered for:
"Complete failure or breakdown of either the heating and/or hot-water supply provided by the primary heating system"
The only exclusions that could apply to us are included in:
"Any form of solar heating, under floor heating system (not including the supplying boiler and controls) and any non-domestic heating boiler and associated system."
So basically our ASHP is covered, but our UFH isn't.
I think what they are saying is that they will cover the cheaper bits, but not the expensive bits. Makes sense from their point of view. You must remember that you are supposed to pay for home insurance, but not actually make any claims. ☹️
It’s been a while since I started this topic and wanted to revisit it to see if there has been progress in getting heat pumps insured. Our latest home insurance policy, with Lloyds, only mentions boilers, and the definition of primary heating system only refers to boilers.
And please cast a vote on the poll above that I’ve just added.
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@editor I hadn’t thought about that aspect! We are also insured with Lloyds and I note that the House & Contents policy we have includes ‘Solar Panels’ Mars, are you thinking in terms of theft, damage by the elements, damage from falling structures or maybe explosion?! Regards, Toodles.
Toodles, he heats his home with cold draughts and cooks his food with magnets.
I've looked through all 4 documents they send me for 'boiler', 'heating', 'air', 'pump', and can't find any specific reference, apart from saying that "warm air" heating isn't covered under home emergency optional cover, but I don't have that cover anyway. This is with LV.
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