Ep 036 - Homeowner Survival Guide: Major Water Leak and the Insurance Claims Process

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts, with the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hi all, welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. I'm Beth Dodson. With me is John Bedrosik. Uh, we are so glad you're here. Boy, have we got a story for you today. The one thing we're going to talk about today is our own personal water damage issue. Yep, you heard me right. The founders of Homesada had a water issue. And so here's how it started. It's 4:30 in the morning and every smoke detector in our house is screaming. And when I say screaming, I mean screaming at John and I like there is no tomorrow. And we Bolt up out of bed and are trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Because at this point, I don't know about you, John, but I think we're about ready to be burned alive in our house from all the smoke detectors that are going on. And we got to figure out how to escape as fast as possible. But it didn't smell like smoke.

Yes.

That's where I say.

Yeah.

Your experience on it, how we woke up to this.

My experience is like when all the alarms went off in the house at the same time, I mean, it's just like you thought you had an adrenaline rush before, like you snap outta bed and you're like, exactly the same thing. Your mind starts racing faster than it probably has ever raced in its life. And you're absolutely right. And this happened in the middle of last summer. And so we have a whole house fan and oftentimes we keep the house fan running at night to cool the house down. And I'm thinking, oh man, that thing maybe, you know, sparked and caught on fire or something. And so, yeah, the first thing that I thought was we have, you know, smoke somewhere in the house and we're going to have to make very fast decisions to figure out how to get out.

And so we're going to proceed with telling you a bit about this story and some of the nuances that happened. And we want to tell you this story because it can help many of you who may experience the same thing with some tips and tricks as well. And so after we get woken up, Like crazy. And by the way, the other thing I was worried about was, okay, we're smoke and we gotta find the smoke. So let's go find the smoke. So I recall I'm going down one way, John's going a different way. We're trying to find smoke. We do not smell smoke. My olfactory sense is off the charts. John's not as good, but I did not smell smoke.

Olfactory, i.e., the ability to smell. Correct.

And I do not smell smoke anywhere. So I am trying to figure this out. And I am like, okay, I don't see anything. I don't, I don't hear anything. I don't, I don't hear like a fire going. I don't smell like a fire. And both John and I are going down different staircases. So we have 2 staircases in our house, which is also good, by the way. If ever you need to escape your house, you have an alternate way to get out of your house. So I'm walking down one hallway. I think, John, you went down our front staircase. I went down our back staircase, or I don't even know. See, I don't even know how this went. And John's trying to find the smoke from his perspective. I'm trying to find it, smell it, whatever. And I don't see any of it upstairs. None of it. And at that moment, I keep walking down the hallway because I also have really good hearing. Also something that's better than John's a little bit sometimes. And I go—

Without a doubt.

I hear something and I go, what is that? And so I keep walking down the hall, down the hall, down the hall, long hall, long hall, and I flip on a light real quick, which probably isn't the best thing to do, by the way, just FYI. And I hear it and I see it. Water is pouring out of our light fixtures and our smoke detector in the back hallway. And I'm like going, good thing number one, quickly turn off those lights. So I turn off all the switches. And I'm like running around turning off any fan or anything that I can turn off to make sure at this point, now that I know there's water, I'm not getting an electrical spark somewhere that will torch this house. And at this point, I think that there's no— because I don't smell it and I don't hear it, I don't think it's about fire, but we're still double-checking. And that's what I see first is the water, and I have to report that to John.

Yeah.

Now, John's doing something different. So let's talk to John about what happened after he woke up at 4:30 in the morning and went, what?

Yeah, so when I sprung out of bed, I'm thinking fire, smoke, and I'm thinking I need to head to the attic, which is where our house fan is. So I only walked down and we're on the second floor of our house. So I only walked halfway down the hallway and went into our space where I could see the attic. The fan is still running, the whole house fan is still running, and I'm looking up into the attic with the lights on, seeing if I could see smoke, and I don't see any smoke and nothing going on in the attic. So at this point in time, I'm still thinking there's a fire. So now I'm coming back out and I'm thinking, okay, this is in the middle of the summer, we live in Northern California, is this a wildfire that broke out on the outside of our house and somehow the smoke is streaming to the inside of the house?

Mm-hmm.

And then I'm thinking, oh, I need to go get some shoes on because I probably need to go outside. So I go quickly back to the room, put some shoes on, and then I walk by Beth, who's already discovered that there's water pouring into the house from the upstairs. And she basically gives me like the shortest 10 seconds of like, John, there's water pouring out of our ceiling. And I think my— if memory serves me correct, I'm like All right, I said, but we still don't know if it's that there's a fire as well as water. So I told her I'm gonna go downstairs to see if there's a source of a fire, and then I'm also gonna go outside to see if there's a wildfire that got started out in some neighbor's area or this, that, and the other. And I also tell her, I'm like, hey, we still need to be prepared to evacuate maybe in the next 30 to 90 seconds. So I'm going downstairs to check for more fire operative sources and going outside.

Code for get your shoes on and get a sweatshirt if you need one.

Correct. And so I'll just kind of continue a little bit. I went downstairs, all the fires, all the smoke detectors, even downstairs are going. I'm like, did we leave the stove on? Did something, you know, did we leave the stove on before we went to bed? No, the stove's on, nothing, no smoke in the downstairs. So I'm like, okay, there's no smoke on the inside. Maybe it's in the garage. I go outside, not in the garage. Then I walk outside looking to see if there's smoke from neighboring areas. Nothing. But I already know that we have a huge water leak issue, and this is kind of like tip number 1, which is I know where our water shutoff valve is to shut the water off in the house.

That's good.

So as I'm walking around the— as I'm walking around the outside of the house saying, is there the fire source on the outside, I'm walking in a direction towards the water shutoff valve. And still see no fire, but instantly I'm like, I'm gonna shut the water off to the entire house. I completely go around the perimeter of the house. No wildfires from neighbors, nothing, this, that, and the other. I'm still confused on— because it's now 90 seconds probably after I got sprung out of bed.

Right.

I'm not really thinking about why the smoke detectors went off, but in the end it was basically a short, meaning the water had gotten into the smoke detectors and that's why they were going off. But I'm still confused at this point in time saying there's no fire. I know we have some sort of water leak because Beth and I even saw it myself on the way down, down the stairs over. There's water pouring out of our ceiling in the upstairs.

And then what ended up happening too was as, as my brain would go, because this is typical of my brain, not only am I hearing these smoke detectors, which are the most horrific squealing sound because we have a whole house fan, we open up all of our windows because we like fresh air. I am now worried about all my neighbors, that we are waking all our neighbors up in the entire neighborhood. And I'm like, they probably got their air conditioning on, they probably don't even know I have a whole house fan, their windows are all closed, they probably don't hear anything. But I'm still worried. Oh my God, we gotta turn off these fire smoke detectors, they're driving me crazy, and my— we're gonna wake up the entire neighborhood, we gotta turn it off. All we need is once you wake up all the dogs, all the dogs start barking. And there's a lot of dogs in our neighborhood, and then the people start getting up. I'm like, this is like a vicious cycle, and I'm like, we gotta get this done, we gotta get this done. And then so after John runs around and doesn't see any fire outside, inside, and tip number 1, he knows where our water shutoff valve is. So tip to you, if you know where your water shutoff valve is, your gas shutoff valve, your other electric shutoff valves, etc., your breakers, Make sure you turn them all off. It's important if you can access it and if there's no fire. If there's a fire, get out as quickly as you can. Have a plan, get out. But from there, they're squealing so hard. If I recall correctly, John, you then run around the house because you're taller than I am and you start taking them all down.

Yeah, I mean that. And you absolutely— I mean, we all probably have heard like the One smoke detector chirp and we're annoyed by it. Well, we've got probably, I don't even know, 8 or 9 smoke detectors and they're all blaring at the same time.

Scary.

And, and, and your adrenaline is just so— what is going on? And, and now I'm like, I gotta go in the garage, get the ladder, 'cause they're all in the ceilings. Some of our ceilings are 9 and 10-foot ceilings, and I'm basically having to disconnect them manually to basically— and I had disconnect one and it finally shuts off, and then I have to go around the entire house to disconnect every single smoke detector to shut it off.

And so we're literally— all these thoughts are running through our head. Now the fortunate part is— Oh, we— can I—

yeah, can I interrupt? When I came back, you had already told me— I had already packed the stuff in the cars and you were ready to back the cars out, and so you were ready to evacuate if I came out from the outside of the house saying there's a wildfire across the street, we need to get out now. So we had— you had already prepped the go bags and stuck them in the 2 cars, and we were ready to leave by the time I circled the house.

Correct. So a couple things here. Tip number 1, know where your shutoff valves are for water, gas, electric, etc. 2, tip number 2, if you've got preparation and go bags and what have you, get ready and put them in the appropriate place that you need to put them in if you have to evacuate. And 3, Teamwork makes the dream work. Divide and conquer can be really helpful. And I know minds might be reeling, but it's important to use that adrenaline for good, not for, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Calm yourself down. And literally, it's an action plan. And just one of my tips are, if you are so stressed out and you think you're the kind of person that's going to get stressed, Practice your action plan or have a written-down action plan beforehand and somewhere where you can go review it so that you can make timely decisions because this is all timely. And if we had not shut off our water shutoff valve, then our house could have actually caught on fire because of the lights and the electric and everything else. And so I remember you were literally taking down all the smoke detectors, but one is super high and you were getting so frustrated. You were just Beating it down and beating it down, and it it came to the point where he just busted it, and he didn't even care because he's like it was the loudest one, I think. And I was like, geez, a whiz! This is so crazy. And so one of those things that I will say also: if you have to get on ladders and whatnot, and you're really groggy and you're stressed out or whatever, please be careful. Be very, very careful. I believe that I was actually trying to. Spot for you in some of these locations because it can be dangerous, especially when you're groggy, when you have to climb up on a ladder and everything else. We're just telling you our experience. We kind of get it together kind of fast. I don't know how, I don't know why, but it's kind of our nature. And maybe it's those construction sites and everything else we've been on and all that stress of running those types of things, but just make sure you're on a ladder Safely if you're going to do this. If you think you are not in a position to get on a ladder, please don't, because none of our neighbors woke up. Yeah, not a darn one heard anything.

Yeah, 2 other tips in retrospect, candidly, which is we actually have, uh, 2 phones in— multiple phones in the house, but we actually have 2 phones upstairs. Um, so if we had to call 911, the phones were very quick to access to be able to call 911 if we did see the fire. And the other part was we actually have fire extinguishers also upstairs and downstairs.

Everywhere.

Um, you know, in our master bathroom as well as the kitchen, laundry room, garage, lots of sort of places that could be the source of fire. So I wasn't walking around with one because I knew I had 2 or 3 others in case I found the fire. I'd go to the one that's closest to the fire if it was a situation where I felt like I could use the fire extinguisher to put it out. Yeah, it's another sort of tip, ladies.

If you're the one that manages everything in your cupboards, make sure your spouse knows where they all are, all the fire extinguishers. Make sure your spouse— every spouse and every party needs to know where their fire extinguishers are in their house, and hopefully they're in multiple locations.

Yep.

So after that, we take down everything. We are wide awake. We did not wake our neighbors up, which I was so grateful for. And we now need to figure out what to do because there is water in our entire back staircase and it's flowing. It's still flowing even though the water shut-off is off. It's still flowing through these units. And I'm like, what in the world do we need to do? And it's 4:30 in the morning.

Well, so if you remember, you had already pulled out pots and pans to try and capture the water.

That's right. I forgot. Oh my God.

You had already, not only did you pack the go bag in the cars, you went and you found pots and pans to basically, for the water that was coming out of the ceiling and into the carpets, you're like, let me collect some of that water already.

To reduce the damage.

To reduce the damage. And, but at that point in time, yeah, our entire section of that ceiling was already full of water and the carpets were full of water and it was flowing down the back staircase and into the laundry room, which is underneath the area. So there's already a fair amount of water, but you'd already put the pots and pans So just FYI, John and I are quick on our feet.

We're very quick. And yes, all of this stuff probably took place in less than five minutes.

I'd say ninety seconds. Ninety ninety ninety seconds, Candace.

Going. Yeah. And so if you the faster you can respond to any type of water damage, the faster you the the more you can minimize. The damage that you are involved in. So it's really important that you do that. So, and that's why if you are not the type of person that wakes up and can, can do these things as quickly as we did, to have a plan of attack and understand some of the tips and tools that you need to do for your particular house. Where are your exit ways? What do you need to do if you have water? Do you know where your pots and pans are? Your fire extinguishers? Walk through everything. Do you know how you're going to exit the house? In a variety of ways. Like, if you are upstairs, can you exit off a window or something like that? Do you have a ladder? Like, we have one of those, um, ladders you can throw over a railing, a decking as well, because you never know. Both my staircases might be under fire and I need to get out another way through a window. So I've got it covered. Can you tell we're super prepared? Um, so then we do that, and I remember it's 4:30, our adrenaline starts coming down. We are just, just beside ourselves that this is all going on. It's 4:30 in the morning, 4:35 at this point, and we're like, well, now what do we need to do? And because we think quickly, I literally start— and because we still have internet, I literally open up Hamsala, and I was like, I just put in our insurance contract. Just a month ago. So I was like, because we had to renew it, sheer coincidental that it was a month ago. And so I put the contract in there and we open up the contract. At this point, remember, we turned off our, um, all the power and stuff into our house, so we have lanterns. John was so smart. He, he— his preparation part of the— our household is to buy us lanterns everywhere and to make sure all those batteries work. And so we have lanterns in a lot of places as well that we pull out when we need them. And we are in a state that unfortunately gets a lot of power outages anyway, so it helps us. I knew you'd get a kick out of that. And so they help us.

That's a whole separate podcast later.

Totally a whole separate podcast. Totally. But we had these lanterns, so we are in our flip-flops, our pajamas, our sweatshirts, and we're sitting outside with our lanterns. and our computers looking at our insurance contract, and we are reading through it in detail and taking notes, understanding what we need to do to file a claim because we are unfamiliar with this process. And this was the first time we have ever had to file a claim in all the years we've been a homeowner. And we're not—

Yeah, probably like 20, 25. I don't know. How long have you— we probably both been homeowners for going on 25 years, I think.

25, 30 years. Yeah.

And never filed a claim before.

Never. Me neither. And it was interesting, but we're not alone in this because it was ironic. When you have water damage, you start meeting other people who've had water damage, and everyone's telling their stories, which is so fascinating, but nobody really talks about it. So we decided to talk about it. So we're reviewing our contract, taking notes, finding out who our claims people are. We have, um, the number that we need to call, clearly not at 4:30 in the morning. We gotta wait till it's regular business hours and everything else. And so we're calling it, we're getting all of our notes together and I'm reviewing it and John's reviewing it because I see things differently and John sees things differently. And he's giving me his notes. We're consolidating the notes. And then one of the things that we like to do once we've done this is we like to compare notes. Would you agree, John?

Yeah, absolutely. And one other thing that as you were reading the insurance contract over how to file a claim and what's covered, and what's not, this, that, and the other. I was, if I remember correctly, I was also going back with my phone and taking photos and videos of the damage.

Yes.

That was going on in the, in the entire area that I could see the damage. So I was trying to do as soon as I possibly could record what was being damaged, and you could actually see the water still dripping out of the ceiling. And I actually went up because I do have attic access to that area. I actually went up there because I knew that the water was coming through the ceiling, but I still didn't know the source or reason why kind of mentality. So I went upstairs into the attic, um, because we have a relatively easy attic access, um, and I went to that section of the roof and I could see the insulation from the top was all wet.

Hmm.

And I could actually decipher we had water lines running over there, and I knew that one of the water lines must have created a leak. I still didn't know where, but I actually looked up into the— I knew I could see the top of the insulation was wet, but then I also looked up and you could see the rafters coming down from the roof. And you could tell when wood gets wet, dry wood versus wet wood. I could see water actually that's part of on our rafters that got wet as well. So it was almost like the water was spraying up and then falling down on top of the insulation. Still didn't know where it was, but I essentially was like, okay, we have a leaky pipe. That's the root cause. I still don't know enough about it, but I was taking pictures of all this stuff.

So that begs, what are our next 2 tips?

Well, tip number 1 is document the damage as soon as you possibly can with videos and photos. I did both, candidly. Read your insurance contract over, you know, what's covered and what's not covered. And then I think it, when it finally got around to it, then it was like, okay, we need to notify our insurance company that we have an issue that we need to resolve, essentially start the process of filing a claim.

Yeah. And one of the things that, because we'd never done this, I called my insurance agent. How do you do this? I was given a little bit of a pushback on the fact that she felt she couldn't discuss this with me. I said, I'm not asking you to discuss the specifics. Just help me understand how I process the claim. I called the claims agent. What needs to happen next? What needs to happen next? And she was explaining to me some of the steps. And she said, your claim will be different than everyone else, but these are the basic steps. And the basic steps were that you call the claims office, they will immediately send somebody out for water remediation. Because water is, from what I hear from a lot of insurance companies, their least favorite thing in the world, because Once again, water is the giver of life, but it is the taker and destroyer of things around you, like houses. So follow the claim, and then they will send water remediation, which actually is amazing. And they were really impressed with the fact that one, we turned off our water shutoff valve, and two, that we added pots and pans everywhere to collect more water, because that helped the water remediation team address things. And what water remediation teams do is they bring in fans, um, items, open windows. They literally bring in areas— I want to say also dehumidifiers or whatever, or water, uh, sucker dehumidifiers that will suck all that water out through all these fans as well, that will dry everything as, as fast as possible. Oftentimes, depending on the situation, they may even rip up carpet. Because carpet is going to be replaced no matter what if it's got water damage. However, you want, you want to make sure those floorboards and all of those stairs and the wood doesn't need to be replaced because that is a much bigger expense and a much bigger inconvenience if you're living there. For instance, we have 2 staircases, but what if we only had one?

Yep.

Then how would we be able to get upstairs? Throw a ladder? I don't think that's going to happen. You would not be able to use your upstairs if you did not have the ability to use your stairs because the wood has been so damaged. So the water remediation team was extremely helpful. Do you have anything to add about the water remediation team, John?

I believe they actually, because we called early in the morning at like 8 AM, you know, and to file the claim, and I think you even sent them some pictures that we had taken as part of the claims process. They told us who our contact person was, and literally, I think the water remediation team came out like 2 or 3 hours later on the same day.

Yes.

And yeah, they, they also put up, um, uh, plastic barriers in the hallway to try to contain any water vapors and potential mold. They put in fans to— essentially what they're trying to do is dry out as much as they can, because drying things out may be salvageable, um, and you may not need to replace it if it's just wet. And, you know, it just really depends. But as soon as you could get in there to dry things out And try to remediate and prevent the, the water that's already soaked from creating more damage is essentially the goal of the water remediation team, which was fantastic response time by our insurance company and the company that they brought out there to do that for us.

Fantastic. One of the things that I think I did make a mistake on that I wish I would have done easier, but it wasn't super big damage. There was a bench with a cushion and some pillows on it that you could sit, like a reading nook, and then some books inside where you lift up the lid. I wish I would have removed some of that stuff faster. I didn't even think about it because I was just so worried about the water and everything else, and now the claim. But that cushion got so soaked that it actually damaged The, um, the built-in cabinet. Yeah, the built-in seating cabinet, and that had to be repaired. And in all honesty, had I probably moved all of that wet cushion off quicker, that probably wouldn't have been damaged, wouldn't have needed to be repaired. So just think about things like that. And, you know, like, the books surprisingly didn't get damaged, so I just moved them out. And then I took all the photographs or paintings or whatever I had on the walls, I just took them off. I just took everything off so as not to get more damage. And it's just a tip, if you've got anything around there that you think could be causing more problems, just move it out into someplace where it can dry out or do something else.

Yeah, we, in retrospect, we were fortunate for so many reasons. One, that we weren't traveling when this thing happened, right? We sometimes, we could have gone on vacation for a week and this would have been horrific. So that's fortunate number one. Fortunate number 2 is where the leak happened. was primarily in our hallway and staircase, so it wasn't in a room where we had a lot of personal property. Like, your office is right next door. Had it been in your office, then you've got your desk and your furniture and all the paperwork.

Mm-hmm.

And so documenting your damage is really documenting them in 2 categories, and this is where our HomeZada experience comes in. One is documenting the damage over essentially rebuilding the building materials and/or equipment and/or appliances that are damaged as a result of damage. And the other category is your personal property. In our case, just given the fortunate location of where the water damage was, it was primarily building materials.

Yes.

You know, we had a wall where we have—

Personal contents.

Yeah, we had a wall where we had a lot of sort of personal pictures that we had taken from our travels and this, that, and the other. Fortunate that the water never got there and never ended up in, in Beth's office. It never ended up in, you know, above a living room or a dining room or, you know, somewhere where you have high-value furniture type stuff or electronics.

Mm-hmm.

But had that happened, that's part of the documentation process. You really want to take probably close-up photos of the personal property that you feel has got water damage, as well as close-up photos of the building materials of the house that you feel have been damaged. And in our case, it was— I could tell that the ceiling drywall was damaged, the insulation was damaged, the carpet was damaged. We probably had shorts on our light fixtures and our smoke detectors. We— it came down into some cabinets on— in, in our laundry room. Couldn't really tell whether the cabinets were damaged or not, but you could start to see it kind of running down that wall. So that's, that's kind of a tip to be able to segment these 2 different things, because your insurance coverage has 2 different policy coverage amounts here.

Yep.

One is the dwelling coverage to replace the building materials, and the other is the personal property coverage. And so You kind of need to make sure that you understand both those points.

Yeah, and to your point, the more information that you have to give to your insurance company right up front, the smoother this process can be. And I will say, we understood our contract, we read it, we took our notes, we understood what we were entitled to, and we understood what, um, is the responsibility of the insurance company and the responsibility of us. Uh, one of those things that was the responsibility of us for some reason, and I find this interesting, repairing the pipes themselves was our responsibility and was not covered by insurance. However, the structural damage of the water was their responsibility. So walls, carpets, any kind of flooring, any kind of cabinets, that kind of stuff, that was their responsibility. And so it's— you have to be very clear. by reading your contract to understand that. And it's smart if you do read that, you can actually come to the table with an intelligent conversation. Now, not only that, but also if you do have personal contents that are damaged, having all of these photos and videos ready to go prior to having your call, you can get an email, you can file your claim through all the appropriate filing processes, and each insurance company is different. And then within that, you can also submit your videos and photos. And as you're as organized as that, then you help them be better organized. Now, once you do that process, and, um, one of the things we experienced is first time having water damage, we also couldn't use our house. Now we're going to talk about electricity in another podcast, but you can use a house if you don't have any electricity. You cannot use a house if you do not have any water.

Explain that, Elizabeth.

It's very difficult. You can't grab water out of your sink. You cannot use your toilets. You cannot shower. None of these things. It's very, very difficult to use your house if that's the capacity.

Can't really cook because you can't really clean.

Yeah, clean dishes. It's, oh, it's gross unless you use paper plates and stuff, which I'm not a big fan of that, but So it's very difficult to use it. So we also knew we were entitled to hotel stays, and we didn't want to stay in a hotel very long, but we knew we had to in order to repair this pipe and whatever else we needed to do, because the water has to stay shut off.

Exactly. Eventually, with the water— the water stopped dripping because, right, when— as soon as you shut the water off on your house If you have a large house or even a small house, there's a lot of water still left in those pipes.

Correct.

So even though you've shut it off, the pipes are essentially draining. But eventually, 10 minutes later, I think all the dripping stopped, which means the water shutoff valve did what it needed to do. But you're absolutely correct. We're kind of in this balance of, uh, we need to do what's the—

it's—

they call it loss of use in, in the insurance policy. The loss of use coverage essentially covers hotel stays. And we were working on how we're going to figure that out. And back in my head, it's like, how am I going to determine where the root cause of the leak is? And can I turn the water back on with a fix? And I didn't know, you know, I need to call a plumber. I need help with this kind of thing. So we're trying to figure out how are we going to get the water back and where are we going to sort of stay? And that's the stage we are at this point in time.

Correct. And once again, John and I are kind of dividing and conquering. We literally assigned swim lanes to each one of us and tasks, and I was going to take on filing the claim, take on making sure we have all the appropriate documentation, and make sure that I understood what the options were for hotels and how to process that. And so I did my due diligence as well and looked up hotels in the region, because at this point I would prefer a hotel with like a little mini kitchen That could help us cook something. And I knew they existed in our region and were affordable because I also don't want— my insurance company doesn't need to spend a ridiculous sum of money for me to stay in this 5-star hotel. It's just a temporary fix. And so while I was doing that, John was dealing with the location of the water leak and how we could actually access through the walls Without violating any type of insurance claim situation and not just cutting into the walls, and then also working with our plumber Pete Pete our plumber and working with Pete who was our initial plumber who could help us through that process. And then keep in mind not everybody wants to do. water damage repair. And so even Pete was— he felt that this was a job that was a little too big for him. He wasn't really interested in it, and he's a great plumber, and we've used him many times. So it was then upon us to find new plumbers, and John was also responsible for that while I am securing a hotel with our insurance company. And I needed to explain why we needed the hotel and at the same time, um, secure that through an online program that they also have, or an app they have that I needed to use in order to secure that site and to work with yet a third party that had nothing to do with the insurance company. So just keep that in mind, you may be working with third parties in order to move through this process of getting your claim done. So you want to talk about The plumbing situation. And we're still in mediation right now.

I can, I guess I'm just gonna ask you, do you want to do a part 2 of a podcast that starts with sort of all the claims process that we went through and just sort of end this one at some point in time? Or do you want to just power through the whole thing?

It's up to you.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's so we got into the hotel loss of use thing. We ended up calling our main plumber who basically came out and said, I, you know, I can't really find your fix. I'm gonna have to refer you. So I had to cycle through a bunch of plumbers, ended up finding a plumber that basically could come out and help troubleshoot. And in the troubleshooting process, we figured out that we had a bigger issue. And this is the part where I don't know if you both want to go into that or not. But the— huh?

You can go into it, and we don't need to go into detail, and we can use that as another Another podcast.

So, so high level, high level, our house was about 22 years old, um, and the plumber came out. He— I kind of gave them direction over where I think the leak was. 2 plumbers came out. One turned the water back on because you need to turn the water back on to see where in the pipe the leak is. Is it a fitting? Is it a leak? This, that, and the other. Found out that it wasn't in a fitting where 2 pipes come together. It was actually in the pipe run itself. So we identified the leaks. We ended up actually having 2 of them because the 2 spots near each other were sort of leaking.

Basically pinhole leaks.

Yeah. And yeah, but water under pressure with a pinhole, that's going— and who knows how long it was leaking that we never know. We could have been leaking for 3 or 4 hours or 5 hours. We just didn't know.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so he cut out the leaks and he basically put in a temporary fix. However, the worst news was, oh, he found out that the manufacturer of our pipe, uh, had a class action lawsuit against them like 10 years ago because they basically developed, uh, a manufacturer's defect in the piping. So we had essentially a company that manufactured this piping 20 years ago is now out of business because the style of pipe that we put in caused pinhole leaks, and we now realize that our entire house is piped with defective piping.

So we are going to talk about what we did with that on a separate podcast because that was a whole issue in and of itself, and we're going to focus on the claim at this present moment and the repairs. Um, but yes, that is a whole nother podcast that we're going to talk about. So Our team— now we're working with Maurice and his team, which are just awesome. They came in, they did the repair, they eventually did some other things for our house, which was amazing. But one of the things they also did, John, was they added a low-flow meter. And this is by no means a sponsored post, but yes, we have a Moen low-flow meter.

It's not necessarily low-flow, it's just a An automatic monitor that monitors the flow of the water flowing from your— like most people, their house is connected to a utility agency that delivers water to your house. And wherever that water comes in from the street, there's a main shutoff valve, and that's where you're shutting the water off to the house. If the water valve is open, then the water is basically feeding your entire house. Well, there's these new, uh, smart home meters are— we chose one from a company called Moen, and it basically installs and it connects to your Wi-Fi, and it detects water flowing through your system. So when you, you know, flush the toilet or turn on your washing machine or take a shower, it detects water is actually flowing. But it starts to learn over time that if your water is flowing for too long Or the flow rate is too great than your normal usage, then that system will automatically shut the water off on your house.

Yes.

So it's a, it's a huge safety mechanism, especially if, like, think about if the water leak had happened while we were on vacation and not in our home.

Yes.

Then we would have never known it, and it would have leaked for, you know, 7 days straight, and we would have had hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage.

Correct.

But now if that happens, because we have the automatic shutoff valve, the system will actually automatically shut the water off to the entire house. And I'll just share you a story about how this actually worked, which is we had some plumber come up and flushed one of the toilets, and the toilet— the flopper didn't go all the way down, so the toilet was running. But it was upstairs, so I didn't even hear it. And like a month after we installed this device, My phone while I'm working starts bleeping saying, we've undetected the half an hour worth of water flowing in your house. We're going to shut the water off in your house. So the thing actually did shut the water off on our entire house, and the source of the leak wasn't causing damage. It was just running water in a toilet. That is the beauty of this particular device.

Which is also identifying a repair we need to make.

Yes.

You know, to replace a flapper. So we did that too that weekend. So not only is this monitor preventing any more damage, it's also helping us make the necessary repairs that we need to make in a toilet area or a bathroom that we don't normally use. Like, not at all. Barely anyone uses.

Yes.

And so we invested in that. We made the repairs. We'll talk about the other thing on another podcast.

Yeah.

Can't—

one, one quick thing I want to point out. The reason why we put that low flow in is like we had fixed the pipe leak, turned the water back on so we could actually get out of the hotel and come back to the house, but we have defective piping in the entire house.

Correct.

And our stress now is, well, what if another part of the defective piping starts to burst in another day or two? That's why we immediately decided to put in the The automatic water flow shutoff device.

It was a smart investment on our part. Smart investment. And so there is that. And then after we, we stayed in our hotel, we went back and forth from the hotel to our house just to work with contractors and everything else. And after the water remediation team were done, because they were done, there's, there's not much more they can do. We're now getting quotes For the repair work.

Yep.

And we're getting quotes from multiple companies. The insurance company is also making recommendations. And that in and of itself is something that both John and I are familiar with because we've done this many times. But what's unfamiliar for us is everyone is submitting quotes in a, in a manner in which we're not prepared for. And apparently there's this system that they use Both the insurance company and the contractors, and it's very complex, very detailed, more complex and detailed than I've ever seen in a quote ever before. And now you've got to figure out why are they not matching each other, especially if the insurance company recommended the contractor. That didn't make any sense to me. So as we're doing this, I am taking it to another level. Yes, I am. Sorry. But I was confused, so I spent a little bit of my time entering in all the data from both the insurance company and the contractor to marry them up because they were not married up on their, their, their details. And it helped me then understand which areas were missing for which parties. And I'm like, wait, what do we really need and what don't we really need? So the contractor was suggesting some other areas that didn't need repair, so we eliminated that. The insurance company was forgetting some things that you actually need to perform a job. And the reason John's laughing is because that thing they forgot was— and this could have been inexperience, it could have been just an oversight, whatever. I'm going to treat it as that. Could have been intentional, but I'm going to treat it as an oversight. I'm going to be nice. And when you install drywall, for anyone who knows how to do that, we have friends that have a big company that do this for a living, you need drywall tape to, to mirror the walls together and to tape them together so that they seal and it looks like one smooth beautiful wall. And that's the other thing, I have smooth walls in a location in the country that doesn't normally have smooth walls.

Yeah.

And so all of that was necessary and there was a large gap There. Had I not put this in the spreadsheet, which didn't take me long because I'm a spreadsheet pretty guru, didn't take me long, I would not have seen the gaps. So I would not have been able to communicate to all the parties that be on how the work needed to be done and deemed married up. And I could actually be available for a call, as could John, to discuss all these details. And we could get everybody on the call together if we wanted. For instance, the contractor, the insurance company, myself, and John to understand how we can accomplish this. Now, I also performed a lot of this work because at the time there were a lot of situations that were occurring across the country. And one of my tips to everyone here is realize that insurance companies are also getting a lot of claims and they vary across the country depending on what they are. And I think right after we filed our claim, The fires in LA happened shortly thereafter. And something like that, something happened, like maybe—

I think it was the hurricane in Florida that went all the way up into Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee as well.

Correct. And so our small claim to our insurance company is small versus the devastation that is being had by other people. So I put our things into perspective. And I actually was able to take on some of the responsibility of understanding their process and marrying everything to help them help us. So, it's the old Jerry Maguire thing. Yes, not a plug for Jerry Maguire, but help me help you. And so, I'm just saying, I believe in really trying to understand what I'm about and doing all this. And then, of course, I also had John review my details as well to make sure I wasn't missing anything. And then we needed to communicate everything to everyone, meaning the insurance company, the contractor, etc. So my suggestion to everyone is, if you are unfamiliar with the tools that they are using, use tools that you are familiar with. And it may take you a little time, But it's worth it if it's a lot of money that you're trying to manage, because you're entitled to what you're entitled if you understand your contract. And you are also responsible for certain things also within the contract as stated. But when there's water damage, there's a lot of damage to your house. And most of these— most of the time, these are expensive Damages that you need to work through. And so if you are unfamiliar with these tools and you really want to be connected, my suggestion is put it in a tool that you can marry it up and figure it out and help educate people. I— drywall tape was missing from our claim file with the insurance company. And like, unlike John, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. And maybe they gave us a new adjuster because they had to switch our adjuster. And maybe she wasn't experienced. That's okay. That's okay. Maybe she didn't know what it was. So this is where we get to also educate back and just say, hey, you're missing this. I don't know if you know that. Here's what's going on. And then go from there. So clearly understanding this process helps you move through it as best you can, as easily as you can. And don't think this was simple for us, by the way. This project was a very lengthy project. But in the scope of things, it could have been faster had some things moved a little faster. And even on our side, getting the data together took some time before we moved the ball forward. Other comments, John?

Yeah, it's just, we had multiple quotes. And then what we didn't know is, are we going to contract with the contractor directly for the fix? Or is the insurance company going to contract? So what's the contracting process? Ours ended up where we contracted, signed the agreement with the— our selected contractor to do the fix. And like Beth said, it was basically agreeing on what the scope is.

Yes.

Um, you know, we have to replace insulation, carpet, in which rooms, and this, that, and the other. And that was the part of the hard part where we're trying to make sure that the scope is essentially what we need to get the house back to where it was before. Getting all the contractor and the insurance company to agree. We obviously have a deductible, so our deductible is like whatever the contractor quote was less our deductible, which had to come out of our own pocket. Then that's the part that the insurance company was going to reimburse. And just sort of getting all that together took quite a bit of time, understanding who we were going to contract with. And then once the contracting process starts, then it's the You know, it— for us, I think it took like 2 or 3 months. How are we going to pay it out? How do the payments happen? Because they don't get paid all up, up front. You're wanting to make sure that the payments happen in time, in sequence. It was scheduling the contractors to come to the house to actually do the work, juggling our own personal schedules, constantly keeping the insurance company informed. So there's a lot of process that's going on that.

Yeah.

Our insurance company never sent out an adjuster to see it themselves. They relied on our own photos and the contractor that they hired to come out and sort of check it out. Some people will have an insurance adjuster to come verify all these things. And essentially then it's just the construction process to get to the thing that's complete. And then when you get to the end of the process, does everybody agree that it's completed the way it needed to be? In terms of the quality of the work, the materials of the work, And how do we get final payment from all the different parties to make sure everybody gets paid properly for their amount of work, whether it's coming from our pocket as the deductible or the insurance company who's reimbursing us first, and then we take that reimbursement and pay the contractor. Lots of sort of contractual workflows over how all these things work was, you know, part of that last process to get to the completion.

Yes, and to John's point, Our contract was with our insurance company, and we had a separate contract with our contractor. Our insurance company and contractor did not have a contract in this particular case anymore. And by the way, I like to negotiate, so I actually negotiate with my contractor because they sent me a contract, and we were doing repairs on an existing property. And one of the things I did negotiate was, well, if you damage something in that wasn't part of the repairs, then you're responsible for it. And so we were able to get that into the contract. A lot of people are like, well, we don't negotiate contracts. I— yes, you are going to negotiate because this is a deal breaker for me. And I've been around a lot of contractors, and when you're doing some repairs or you're doing some other things, invariably one contractor has a skill set on something, and sometimes they don't care about the other ones, and so on and so forth, which is why I'm always touching up paint in my house, but I wanted to make sure that we were covered properly. And so you do have the ability to negotiate with your contractor. You may need to be the conduit between everybody, and in my opinion, you need to be because these contracts— you have a contract with your insurance company, you have a contract with your contractor, they do not have a contract together on this particular project. They may from a referral perspective, but not on your particular project, not anymore. And so you need to be informing all the parties that be. So you're kind of acting like a project manager from a communication perspective. And so that was one of the things I did while John was managing and project managing a different project, which we will get into on another podcast. But the process we wanted to bring up to you is it can take as long or as short as you have with this claim. One of the things that we also had is because we use Hamzada, I already knew the carpet that I wanted because I already had it, and I had the vendor I purchased it from, which was right down the street from the contractor. I already had the paint color even though the paint company went out of business. I knew the paint company and I knew the paint color, so the new paint company Could actually create a matching color, or they already knew it, and so they could fulfill that need. So because I have used Hamzada and I was prepared and I wanted everything exactly the way it was, when my contractor gave me a sheet to fill out all the details of the finishes, that was a cakewalk. I got it done in like five seconds. Ding ding ding ding ding ding, and I sent it back. And they couldn't believe it. They're like, how do you know all this? I go, I use Humzaba. I track it all. And so literally any way that you can be prepared and make sure that you are filling everybody in as early as possible helps them order carpet early, get their paint organized, get their teams on staff, figure out what else needs to happen, and then They will walk— they, the contractor, will walk you through the steps that you need to take. Who's coming in for drywall? Who's— how much insulation are you putting, replacing? What are you removing? Because you need to remove things. Do you need electrician to update everything? Do you need a permit, if anything? Do you need permits? Do you need an inspection done on the end? All these things matter, and That's what's really important. And I'll also say this just to close out. We didn't get canceled from an insurance company, but that was a separate discussion and we'll go into that on a separate podcast. But yeah, anything else to add? There's a lot of details.

Yeah, just, I mean, because the, because the construction process was 3 months, we did create a project in Homesada and just documented the progress photos.

Heck yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, after a couple days, the contractor did demo, took pictures of what it looked like after the demo. Then they started to, you know, put in the drywall, took pictures of that. Then they started taping the drywall. Then they put in the insulation. So just documenting the sequence over what's getting done is an important aspect of, even though the, you know, insurance company's paying for the bulk of it, less our deductible, and the contractor hopefully is doing good quality work, Just keeping track of the progress of what's going on in case something did end up not being installed correctly. We had sort of proof of these things as well as being able to potentially show the insurance company that we actually did do the work. We didn't just accept the claim money and not do the work kind of mentality. So having what I call construction progress photos and stored that in Homes Auto was extremely helpful during that process.

No, I forgot about that. That was— that's actually very important. And that also, remember, I asked for That clause in the contract. If you damage anything else other than what you're supposed to be working on, I get a claim on that and I'll get to— you get to repair it. So that was also important that John, by taking the pictures, he was helping honoring my clause that I put in this contract with the contractor. So see, once again, teamwork makes the dream work. And it makes our progress— our project move Smoothly and as best we can, because it's never flawless, because you do have errors. And we did have situations, but they weren't detrimental and they weren't super, um, costly. They were just frustrating every now and then. But if you are prepared in your insurance with any potential claim and you use these tips that we've given you Document where the damage is. Know your contract for your insurance contract. Turn off your shutoff valves of anything— water, electric, gas, whatever. Search your house. Have a go bag. Understand how to exit your house. Grab shoes and a sweatshirt. Divide and conquer if you can. Don't climb ladders if you are out of it. Get out of your house if you're out of it. Right? If you're not good under pressure, it's, it's no, it's not a big problem. Just know where you're strong and where that doesn't work for you. And that way you will keep your family safe, you will minimize the risk on your house, and you will file a claim with your insurance company that can move the ball forward smoothly as best you can. I'm not saying it's going to go without hiccups. I'm saying as smoothly as you can. Those are my tips, John. Do you have anything else to add while we close out?

Uh, no, just, uh, in reciting our story from massive adrenaline spike at 4 in the morning, I think that started like in the middle of August until the end where we actually settled all the claims and got paid and everybody got paid, I think was all the way until like February. So that was the length of the process. So, um, just set your expectations over, like Beth said, there's all these different steps in the process. And the more you're prepared about all these different steps and having a system in place and knowing all these things, the more— less stress you're going to have because you're going to be more knowledgeable about the entire soup-to-nuts process.

You know, before we close out, I did forget about one thing. Your house will be under construction. We just told you August to February. Yes, you have to work within that. So getting frustrated, you can vent a little bit, but it's not going to do you any good. It is what it is, and you're just gonna have to work with it. You have to figure a way around it. So like, my office was in the midst of all the, the construction, so I went right away to my co-working space, or I worked in a different part of my house. That's what I did. I just—

Nope.

It is what it is, and you got to get it done.

Yep. All right, that's it.

Well, thank you so much for being with us. We hope our experience helps you in some capacity and these tips are good for you. Um, it's not the end of the world. Water damage is a pain in the neck, and any kind of claim is a pain in the neck. We just wanted to give you our tips because we felt like nobody else was talking about it. And so work with your insurance company, know what you are entitled to, but at the same time, know what you're also responsible for and help Your insurance company move through the process as quickly as possible, and they will help you get paid now and stay on top of things. So have a wonderful day, and thank you for joining us for Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. And as usual, please subscribe and share this with anyone who you think might need it. And we'd love to hear about anyone else's damage and/or claims process. Could be a fun conversation.

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