Home insurance for extended trips.

The user and all related content has been deleted

We got quotes from SAGA, the basic cover premium was lower at £341, the premium cover was £431, but the standard unoccupancy offered was only 60 days, so we discounted it.

Just to clarify,The Caravan Club's home insurance policy gives 90 days unoccupancy cover as standard.  If this needs to be extended, there are certain requirements from insurers which need to be fulfilled in order for the cover to continue.   

Can you clarify further please? Does the 90 days refer to per year of cover, or per trip?

The policy states 90 consecutive days per trip.

Jean, the CC policy is good as was our on-line quote, but the huge hike in premium when OH rang regarding our property being timber frame with brick outer skin, made it very expensive.

Timber frame is a very common construction method in Scotland for properties built in the last  50 years, so you are cutting out quite a fair number of potential customers.

We have never had this problem before.

Thanks for the info Kj could you repost please when you have firmed up the details, as this might be something we would be interested in, we currently have CC so 90 day cover but might go away for longer in the future.

TG.....we have now gone with the C&CC policy, it is very comprehensive without the unoccupancy conditions being too onerous for us.

However, if you are away between 1st October and 31st March for over 14 days, you may find it is not for you as there is a requirement to ....

turn off the water

and

either drain all water and heating systems or leave heating on to maintain a minimum temperature of 15 degrees C

and

a visit every 7 days by a responsible adult

15 degrees seems unreasonably high to me, we have automatic frost stats on our systems and they trigger at 5 degrees.  But as we do not usually go away for long trips in the "winter", it is OK for us. 

Not actually sure how we would ensure 15 degrees as we have no central thermostat!  Would need to experiment with boiler stats and TRVs.

Premium is £386 incl Legal, cover is £400k rebuild and £89k contents, including full accidental damage and £5k all risks on things we take on holiday.

Insurer is Canopius. From research it seems to be undewritten by Lloyds syndicates.

Just to clarify,The Caravan Club's home insurance policy gives 90 days unoccupancy cover as standard.  If this needs to be extended, there are certain requirements from insurers which need to be fulfilled in order for the cover to continue.   

Can you clarify further please? Does the 90 days refer to per year of cover, or per trip?

The policy states 90 consecutive days per trip.

Jean, the CC policy is good as was our on-line quote, but the huge hike in premium when OH rang regarding our property being timber frame with brick outer skin, made it very expensive.

Timber frame is a very common construction method in Scotland for properties built in the last  50 years, so you are cutting out quite a fair number of potential customers.

We have never had this problem before.

I will speak to our insurers about this and come back to you,

The user and all related content has been deleted

I think it probably depends on sums insured.

If we had gone for smaller sums, there would have been more companies available for us to choose from.

All the quotes we got had similar conditions, some even wanted higher excesses as well.

KjellNN

Surely most homes currently being built are timber framed with brick cladding?

David

I don't know about in England David, but it is certainly popular up here.

The attitude does seem to vary widely between insurers, some class TF as standard, others bump up premiums hugely.

Kj, thanks for the re-post. The setting thermostat to 15c wouldn't be a problem for us as we have a radio controlled one so could move it to the warmest room in the house which would reduce the overall temp. we normally leave it at 10c when going away and my sister checks the house for us. I would check with them after reading WTG's post hopefully we may not be required to have restrictions like yourself, as you say there are so many variations even with the same underwriters, good to know though that they will cover for 180 days.