› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Living in strata › Water damage and Insurance claim › Current Page
It doesn’t matter if it is gradual damage, that doesn’t preclude an insurance claim. The issue may be if there was a problem with the common property that the OC knew about and did nothing, in which case the insurance company may refuse the claim. You are correct, in many cases an issue doesn’t become evident until substantial damage starts showing.
I recently had several ceilings replaced that were badly water damaged, and the insurance paid for that – the damage occurred over quite an extended period of time, i.e. years. The insurance company would not pay the claim out until we had the roof fixed, for obvious reasons, but they did pay.
I am not sure why the strata manager is dismissing your concerns – if there is an issue with the common property that has caused damage to your townhouse, then on the face of it the OC is responsible for fixing it. From what you have said, no-one has bothered to find out what the cause of the water ingress is and I suggest that is the starting point. If he won’t come to the party, it would be worth your while to get someone in to determine what is causing it, and then write a very strongly worded letter telling the OC that they are obliged to fix it, assuming that the problem is being caused by a defect in the common property.
There is no point in replacing your tiles if there is something wrong with the subfloor – if it is still damp after two weeks this needs to be investigated.