Prevent Water From Going Where it Shouldn’t

One of the most disheartening experiences is to find flooding or extreme water damage to your treasured home in Oxford or Cincinnati, OH.

 
At Fey Insurance we know you want to protect what’s important. That’s why we’re offering these tips to help you prevent many of the most common causes of water damage.

Just a little time and some effort can prevent a lot of heartache and hassle.

Ø  Make sure your water pressure is not set too high. For just $6 or so, you can purchase a gauge that will help you test your pressure for the appropriate level, which should be set between 60 and 80 PSI.

Ø  Standard hoses on new appliances are not as durable as they used to be. So check your appliances. If they’re rubber, either replace them with longer lasting stainless steel braided hoses or replace them every three years.

Ø  Keep water from leaking into the walls or floor of your bathroom by replacing cracked tiles and re-grouting when it’s needed.

Ø  Examine the shingles on your roof. Worn, curled or missing shingles allow water in, so replace them as soon as noticed.

Ø  Consider buying a water alarm, which can help you find leaks, or automatic shut-off mechanisms, which can help avoid bursts.

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After-School Safety Tips for Parents and Kids

Parents, weather is starting to warm up in southwest Ohio, so you’ve likely already reviewed the basic safety tips for kids who walk or bus to and from school.

Those tips, of course, are:

• Walk with a buddy
• Stay in well-lit areas
• Never accept a ride with strangers
• Once home, lock the door and don’t let anyone in

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Tornado Truths That Can Help You Stay Safe

Tornadoes have caused severe and irreparable damage to tens of thousands of Americans and their property in recent years. On top of the physical and emotional fallout, many have also lost their lives as a direct result of a tornado.

Although you can never control the weather or the outcome of a destructive storm, there are steps you can take to help you and your family remain protected in the event of a tornado. Those steps of action begin with knowing fact from myth.

Here are a few tornado truths that could help keep you and those you love safe:

 

When indoors, shut all windows and doors. Do not leave them open in an attempt to follow the mythical need to “pressurize” your home because the result would more likely be debris flying through the window and causing severe harm, or wind pressure working to lift the roof off the house from the inside.

 

If you are inside your home or other structure, retreat to the lowest level (a basement is ideal) or the room closest to the middle of the home or farthest from windows and doors. Do not seek a “corner” of the structure for your retreat; instead, go to the center-most point, away from windows and anything heavy that could fall on your head.

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Ohio Teen Driver Changes

Effective July 1, 2015 there have been some changes to the laws for drivers under the age of 18 in the state of Ohio that all teens and parents of teens should be aware of.  The changes are as follows:
-No driving between midnight and 6 a.m., unless a parent or guardian accompanies the youthful driver. Those with valid documentation from work, school or church allowing for travel for activities between these hours are exempt.
-No driving with more than one non-family member in the car
-All passengers must wear safety belts at all times
-Prohibits the use of mobile communication while driving

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Insurance Things to Consider on Rental Properties

Over the last few years many homeowners have turned into landlords.  With the real estate market drop, those that decided to purchase a new house also decided to not sell their prior home for fear of a financial loss on the property.  Instead, they have turned their prior house into a rental.  The trend still continues today even after the real estate market has rebounded some because landlords are seeing great cash flows from renting.

Here at Fey Insurance Services we insure a number of these properties and on occasion we are asked by clients if we have any insurance tips in renting a property.  When asked we always mention these two things:

1.  Temperature Requirement in the Lease:  It is a good idea to include a clause in your lease that requires the tenant to keep the heat no colder than 59 degrees.  This is important because around the Holidays many tenants will travel and if they want to try and save a buck they may turn off the heat.  Pipes do not enjoy this especially with a polar vortex threatening again this year.  This way, if they do turn the heat off and pipes break you can pass that damage on to the tenant.

 

2.  Renters Insurance for Tenants:  Since you may have passed on the risk of pipe freezing damage to your tenant you then want to make sure they have insurance in place to pay for such damages.  Requiring tenants to have renters insurance is a good idea.  Not only does it protect their contents (which is excluded under your policy), it protects your property if they are negligent in causing damage to your property.  I would recommend they have liability limits at least the value of your property.

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Catastrophe Liability Protection

How much liability protection do I need to carry to protect me and my family? Unfortunately there is no simple formula which you can use to calculate how much liability insurance you really need. With your home or a commercial property, there are computer programs which will help determine the construction replacement Please contact us, and we will prepare a quotation for your review on this very important catastrophe liability protection.
cost of the building, but there is no such program in the area of third party liability claims. Some insurance companies claim they make you “legal” for less, but in Ohio, for example, that means bodily injury limits of $25,500 per person/$50,000 per accident and property damage limits of $25,000. Any kind of serious accident will wipe out those limits in a heartbeat. As a bare minimum, we recommend no less than $500,000 in Personal Liability and $250,000/500,000/100,000 in Automobile Liability, but higher limits are available and recommended. This is where the Umbrella Liability Policy comes into play. These policies are written in increments of $1,000,000 with $1,000,000 being the lowest limit you can purchase. Limits of $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 are usually available, and higher limits are also available depending on the circumstances.

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Homeowner Policy: Section 1

A homeowner policy is made up of two sections, Section 1 Property and Section 2 Liability.  This blog post will focus on Section 1 which outlines the four property coverages provided by a homeowner policy.  Those four coverages are as follows:

-Coverage A Dwelling:  This coverage pertains to the actual house itself.  The limit shown on the policy in this section is the amount of insurance the policy will pay out if the house was totally damaged.  It Is important to understand that this limit of insurance should be based on Reconstruction Costs (the amount it would take to rebuild the house) instead of Market Value (the amount you can buy or sell the house on the real estate market).  For more details on this check out our Reconstruction Cost vs Market Value article.  The dwelling limit of insurance will drive the other three parts of Section 1 Property so for example purposes let's say our Coverage A Dwelling limit is $200,000.

 

-Coverage B Other Structures:  Other Structures are property located on your land that are not permanently attached to your home.  This would be things like detached garages, fences, sheds, barns and pools to name a few.  Back in the 50's this was a much more common concern to have Other Structures coverage because the norm was to have a detached garage.  Today many garages are part of the house so this coverage is not as much of a focus on new homes.  The homeowner policy, however, automatically includes this coverage in most cases so even if you do not have a need for it, still it is there.  The limit for this coverage is usually 10% of the dwelling limit so if our Coverage A is limit is $200,000 then our Other Structures limit is $20,000.

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