Does Insurance Cover Sewage Backup?

Twin Home Experts has performed sewage cleanup and drain cleaning to over 1,800 sewage backups. Those backups cause major damage for homeowners in Los Angeles and nearby areas.

Sewage backup damage is not as common as water damage restoration in a home in Los Angeles.

Most of the time we have seen sewage back up being covered under what we call a soft stoppage. That means there is a clog in your drain pipe that is built up of toilet paper or paper products. You have to be careful what you throw down your drains, because insurance may claim negligence, and you will get denied.

Now it is less common, but when it happens, it can get nasty! Nasty, not only with dealing with feces all over the place, but getting coverage can get just as nasty. We have seen coverage for sewage backup all over the place. Make sure you add this to your policy if you don’t.

We have dealt with five popular insurance companies for sewage back ups:

State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, Mercury Insurance, USAA Insurance and Liberty Mutual.

Most of these insurance companies will cover sewage backups causing damage to your home if it’s a soft stoppage. While we’re on the subject of insurance companies, our favorite insurance companies that treat the homeowners fair, and offer far more coverage:

State Farm is at the top of our list because they care, and we have seen them come through for so many of our customers. They have made more exceptions than ANY other insurance company we have ever dealt with for sewage backup in a home. Especially, when it comes to water damage in Los Angeles.

*State Farm does not cover sewer line replacement.

Farmers insurance comes in at Twin Home Experts number two. Great company, but we have found that Farmers puts up more denials than State Farm. However, we still recommend farmers over the competition for your home liability insurance.

*Farmers does not cover sewer line replacement.

Liberty Mutual insurance is an overall good insurance company, but they like to nitpick claims, and sometimes make it difficult. You can’t go wrong.

*Liberty Mutual does not cover sewer line replacement

We feel that USAA insurance is about the same rating as Liberty insurance and offer the same level.

*USAA does not cover sewer line replacement.

In our professional opinion, dealing with them on so many claims, they are the MOST difficult and we get so many complaints from our customers about how they were treated. Mercury denies more claims than ANY other insurance company here in Los Angeles.

A great way to prevent sewage backup is to add some auto clean out caps that will pop off outside. This alleviates the sewage from backing up into the home.

• Dry down
• Demolition to damaged materials
• Flooring
• Paint, etc

Basically they have to put your house back to its original state.

There’s a few things we have seen getting denied when it comes to sewage backup insurance coverage.

Roots growing inside the main sewer pipe outside the 4 walls of your home, typically is not covered. Although, we have seen some insurances issue coverage.

Plumbing repairs or replacement, we have never seen any insurance company pay for plumbing bills, other than leak detection services.