What Insurance Actually Covers (And What It Does Not)
Standard homeowner policies cover SUDDEN AND ACCIDENTAL water damage — pipe bursts, appliance failures, storm intrusion through a damaged roof. They do not cover GRADUAL damage from a slow leak you did not notice for months, or flood from rising water (that requires separate flood insurance through the NFIP).
The cause-of-loss narrative we write determines which policy bucket your claim lands in, so getting that documentation right at hour one matters more than any other single thing on the job. We frame the cause honestly — slow leak vs sudden burst, wind-driven rain vs ground-level flood, supply line vs drain — so the right policy pays the right portion.
What we document for your claim:
- Source of loss + date discovered, with corroborating photos
- Photos of every wet surface before equipment goes down
- Moisture readings as a baseline + at every daily monitoring visit, mapped to a building diagram
- Detailed scope of mitigation + reconstruction in Xactimate format with line-item pricing
- Equipment list with run-time logs (air movers + dehumidifiers, hours each)
- Final clearance moisture readings showing every wet substrate returned to dry-standard
This documentation is what gets your Hopatcong claim approved without three rounds of back-and-forth with an adjuster.