Insurance requires home water leak detector and drone inspections?

[2manyrocks]

Somewhere the insurance company has probably decided that monitoring reduces the payments they have to make because the water gets turned off faster with monitoring than without it.

Last Christmas, the overhead sprinkler pipes burst above the college library where my wife works due to unusually cold temps that caused the pipes to burst. Although the staff discovered the leak in the early am, a heck of a lot of water had already poured into the building before the leak was discovered. It took months to repair all the damage at a significant cost. They had to remove most of the books from the library to replace the carpet under the shelving, etc. So I can see how discovering a leak and getting it stopped as quickly as possible would be advantageous.

 

[5030]

Insurance companies are all there to make money, not go broke paying claims. It's all about 'biness'...

 

[ericm979]

Somewhere the insurance company has probably decided that monitoring reduces the payments they have to make because the water gets turned off faster with monitoring than without it.

Even if it doesn't work very well and only catches leaks in a few cases, it's profit for the insurance company. They're not paying for the installation.

The people I know who have them complain about numbers false positives where it shuts down your water even though there's not a leak.

 

[ultrarunner]

I have several thoughts...

Might be a way to weed out unwanted customers

Might be a way to offset liability such as the unit was not checked for function or battery replacement logged?

Customers balking could be the very ones to fight settlements, etc.

At one time mortgages and insurance disappeared from a lot of older inner city neighborhoods... older housing stock was the stated issue.

Lawsuits filed saying Redlining disproportionally affected people of color so no more Redlining.

Then the insurance inspections ramped up so the State came up with Fair Plan...

Over the decades Fair Plan keeps expanding as companies pause or leave... nothing to do with fires.

Then we have had back to back huge fires and some of the blame attributed to homeowners prohibited from tree tree removal and things like discing because of habitat damage and protected flora and fauna... or even forbidden to use gas powered brush cutters...

 

[5030]

All viable reasons for a consumer screwing I'd say.

 

[2manyrocks]

My wife came in and just told me that the college actually had leak monitoring in place. They got to the leak 5 minutes after monitoring detected it, but there was so much water in those 5 minutes that it took the entire semester to repair all the damage.

Ins. companies are probably looking for ways to cherry pick the least risk to them for the most profitable return.