Mold in your home? How does insurance respond?

Mold. Mold. Mold. There are 3 types of mold- bad mold, very bad mold, and extremely bad mold. Bad mold is the kind that you find on the cheese in your refrigerator or your bagels. Its gross, ruins your food (and maybe appetite), and is not covered by your insurance.  Fortunately, you may only be out a few dollars and cheese for your sandwich. Our solution for this situation is just to simply eat your cheese and bread sooner!

Very bad mold is the kind of mold that you might find covering all of your luggage the day before your trip. You head down to the basement to pull out you big suitcase for your summer trip and you find every bag is covered and destroyed by mold. Unfortunately, your homeowners insurance does not cover this mold either. Now, you have to throw your luggage away and buy new luggage for your trip. For this, we recommend getting a dehumidifier for any damp areas, such as a basement or crawl space.

Finally we get to the extremely bad mold. There is good and bad news. The bad news happens when you notice a small amount of mold under the kitchen tile and realize the entire kitchen floor is covered in mold. This is where the good news starts. Luckily, if the mold was caused by a leak in the refrigerator line, the insurance company will help to fix the problem up to the limit within the policy. If the mold is not caused by a “covered loss” then the insurance would not apply and you are on your own to solve the problem.

At the end of the day, all mold is bad. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the insurance company will only cover mold losses if it is from a covered loss (this is usually that extremely bad mold). If you have any questions or want to discuss more coverage for mold, give us a call.