If you are thinking about adding a pool to your home in the coming months, what do you have to do to get ready? Often, installing a pool will mean taking a close look at your homeowners insurance. Your coverage will need changes upon the installation of a pool.
So, don’t hesitate to talk to your homeowners insurance agent. We’re here to help you determine where to adjust coverage if you install a pool.
Liabilities Associated with Your Pool
Pools are dangerous, no matter how many safety precautions you take. There’s always going to be a chance of drownings or injuries when people use it. So, the biggest area where your pool will impact your home insurance is within your liability coverage.
Liability insurance covers the damage you might cause to others. So, if someone, like a neighbor, gets hurt in your pool, coverage can help them cover costs from medical bills or other needs.
Simply adding the pool to your home will make the property more of a liability risk. Also, because pools often lead to costlier damages, you’ll want to increase the limit of your liability coverage. Both these factors might raise your policy premiums. However, the increased coverage can do a better job in helping you increase your security.
Additional Property Damage Risks
When you put in a pool, you will increase the value of your property. You thus will have to consider adjustments to your property insurance to cover the new value. However, how the item has coverage on your policy will vary.
Some property policies consider the pool to be part of the home’s structure. Others, however, cover the pool as an extraneous structure (as they would items like sheds). The good news is, regardless of the pool’s status in your policy, it should have coverage for damage. Even so, based on its property qualifications, the amount of money you can receive for a claim might vary.
For example, if the pool has coverage as an extraneous structure, you might only be able to receive a percentage of the policy’s replacement cost value for repairs. For example, if your home has a replacement cost value of $200,000, you might only get 10 percent, or $20,000 for repairs on the pool. So, if the pool has a higher value, you might not have full coverage.
Therefore, work with your agent to increase coverage to the full value of the pool. Though this might have an impact on your premiums, it will protect you in the end. Keep in mind, however, that you might still face extra costs, like deductibles. Therefore, our agents can help you adjust your coverage to your satisfaction.