This is the question we are asked more than any other, usually somewhere between the water stopping and the first contractor arriving. It deserves a straight answer, and the straight answer is that it depends on a number you can work out in ten minutes.
Nobody whose income depends on the claim being made is likely to volunteer that conversation. So here it is.
First, establish what kind of water this was
Everything else follows from the entry route, and Ontario policies treat four situations completely differently.
| How the water arrived | Typical position on a standard Ontario policy |
|---|---|
| Sudden escape from plumbing or an appliance | Usually covered |
| A leak that developed gradually over months | Usually excluded |
| Up through a drain, a toilet or a floor drain | Only with a sewer backup endorsement |
| Over the ground and in through an opening | Only with an overland water endorsement |
| Up through the slab or a foundation crack | Frequently excluded outright as seepage |
Sewer backup and overland water are optional add-ons. They are not standard, they are among the cheaper endorsements available, and a great many households in Wasaga Beach and Stayner discover which ones they carry on the worst possible morning.
So before anything else: photograph the entry route. A drain, a doorway, a crack at the slab-wall joint, a stain running down from a ceiling. That photograph is worth more to your position than an hour of extraction, and it cannot be taken retrospectively.
Then do the arithmetic
Add up three things.
Your deductible. Whatever the claim pays, this part is yours.
The realistic repair cost. Not the worst case and not the best. What water damage restoration costs in Collingwood sets out the bands for each kind of loss, and the rebuild is a separate number on top.
What the claim does to your renewals. A water damage claim on your history affects how your renewal is priced, and it does not fall off next year. Over the length of time you are likely to hold the policy, that is a real figure and not a small one.
If the repair is close to the deductible, the answer is almost always to pay for it and keep the record clean. If the repair is several times the deductible, the policy is doing exactly what you bought it for.
The cases where you claim without thinking about it
There are four, and they are not close calls.
Anything with sewage in it. A sewer backup is Category 3 water, the porous materials come out rather than being cleaned, and the scope is large by definition. If you carry the endorsement, use it.
Anything structural. Water into a floor assembly, a wall structure or a ceiling that has begun to sag is not a cosmetic loss and should not be paid for out of pocket to keep a record clean.
Anything that crossed a boundary. Water that reached a neighbour’s unit, a tenant’s belongings or a shared wall stops being purely your problem, and the liability side of the policy exists for that.
Anything where the building has been wet for weeks. A burst pipe in an empty chalet in The Blue Mountains found in March is a rebuild with a drying phase inside it, and the number will not be small.
The cases where claiming is usually the wrong move
A caught-immediately spill on a hard floor. A dishwasher that leaked into one cabinet base. A shower pan that soaked one section of subfloor. A single ceiling stain from an ice dam where the attic insulation above it is dry.
All four of those are real jobs and all four sit close to a typical deductible. Reporting them buys you very little and costs you a mark on a record that gets read at every renewal.
The trap in the middle: the gradual leak
Most Ontario wordings cover water escaping suddenly and accidentally, and exclude damage from a leak that occurred gradually over time. A dishwasher seal that has been weeping a little every cycle for eight months is the textbook example of the second one, and it is one of the most common losses we are called to.
That matters before you report it, because a declined claim still appears on your history. It is worth understanding what you are looking at first — appliance and supply line leaks covers how to tell a fast failure from a slow one, and the difference is visible in the materials.
If you do claim, ask for one thing
Ask for the readings.
On a claim, the restoration contractor is usually paid directly by the insurer. That is convenient, and it also means the person deciding how much drywall has to come out is being paid by somebody other than you. It is not a scandal and it is worth knowing.
A properly run job produces a daily moisture log anyway — dates, locations, the instrument used, and reference readings taken from unaffected material in your own building. Asking for it costs nothing. Not being given it is the signal that an independent moisture inspection is worth the few hundred dollars, particularly in the week before the walls close.
One local note
If your loss came from a river rather than a pipe, both conservation authorities covering our area publish graded flood messages ahead of these events — the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority for Collingwood, Wasaga Beach, Stayner and Creemore, and Grey Sauble for Thornbury, Clarksburg and Meaford.
A Flood Watch is not a coverage document. It is, however, a dated public record that conditions existed, and on an overland water claim that is a more useful thing to have in the file than a recollection of how hard it rained.