Clanwilliam - This will be one of my last columns written from this small town.
After much thought we have decided there is just too much we miss about Cape Town. We have decided to move back, while we are still young enough, have a bit more fun and learn to live with the traffic and south-easter.
I will once again be involved in a little contracting, but will also have the opportunity to visit those readers who send awkward questions which need me to see the problem first hand. Please ensure you have the chocolate cake and coffee ready.
As a lead-up to returning to the city, I have been chatting to a few of my old contacts to see what is going on in the industry. One suggested I might have some work for him. He is a great guy, and one of the best in his field, but I told him I have always found him expensive.
His reply was to send me the following, written by John Ruskin in the 1800s. For those of you thinking of getting quotes for any type of work, it still applies today.
“It’s unwise to pay too much but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
Build-up to the holidays
You have a few days until the builders shut down for four weeks – in real terms this probably means a couple of days as the last week in many cases becomes a “party” week.
You need to ensure that, if nothing else, your site is left clean and tidy. You don’t want to spend your holiday fielding complaints from neighbours about dirt, sand or whatever blowing into their Christmas lunches.
If you are going away, don’t make it too obvious. If you have had contractors in your home, they will know where the weak spots are, so ensure all your entrances are properly secured.
Two pitches on roof claim problem
Over the past few weeks, we have been dealing with Lilian’s roof issues from both a practical and insurance point of view. Two readers have sent commentaries, which are well worth a read. I am hoping they attract comments from others who agree or disagree.
Mike, a retired engineer and passionate home owner, says:
The claim was apparently for water damage. The roof tiles could be double roman, or whatever. If the drooping plastic was a point at issue, then I would comment thus:
1. I do not believe a roofing tile needs plastic sheeting to prevent water ingress, unless there is something wrong with the laying.
2. The plastic sheeting is laid directly on the rafters, followed by the purlins, then the tiles. The sheeting eventually rots away over time and it cannot be replaced in its original position without stripping off all the tiles and the purlins on which they rest, placing new sheeting and replacing the purlins (unless the damage requires new purlins), then re-laying the tiles. All this is clearly uneconomical and impractical.
3. It appears to tell us somebody has cut away and cleaned out bundles of rotten plastic. I believe this is the only sensible answer and, if the roof tiles now leak, one should inspect in loco and find out where and why.
4. I live in a house with a roof very similar to that in your photo, with double roman tiles, and I have gone through the physical gymnastics of clearing out the rotten yellow plastic. That labour was finally completed about two years ago, and I have no water ingress at all. That is as it should be.
5. I used to live in a house with a fairly low roof slope covered by flat asbestos-cement tiles, with no plastic underlay. In 30 years the roof never leaked a drop and there was minimal settled dust.
6. I question the necessity for plastic and imagine it is possible that in the 1980s some smart salesman might have worked up a case for such linings based on an unjustified fear of leakage.
Bevan, an insurance broker, has the following comments:
Highlighting Lilian’s roof claim rejection in your column serves as a reminder to all of us.
I am happy to throw our stone in the dam to make some ripples as a response.
* It seems that Lilian either doesn’t have a broker or did not get her broker to help with her claim – error number one.
* If anyone has a claim problem, ask your broker, and they will be happy to help you navigate your way through a nightmare like Lilian woke up to.
* Fewer claims are being repudiated by insurers in recent years, with more power to the insurance ombud and with an improved body of brokers.
* Still, one of the most frequent reasons for building claims being rejected is for losses as a result of “gradual deterioration”. This risk is not covered by the premium you pay and it is unfair to expect your insurer to pay for your preventative maintenance.
* A typical claim in Cape Town is when the guttering falls from old wooden fascia board. This usually happens after a wet and windy winter. If the guttering and/or the board is unsound or damaged, it’s due to “gradual deterioration” and a claim will not be covered.
* Lilian’s first remedy should be to ask her broker for help in attending to the claim.
* As far as I know, there is only one insurer who refuses to work through brokers and the biased advice from this broker is to avoid using them.
* My closing advice to Lilian is to call in her own, suitably qualified, assessor to draw up an independent report and, if this is favourable, re-submit the claim.
* Finally, before moving her insurance to a new insurer, she must call in a registered roofing contractor to examine and attend to any repairs to, or deterioration of, her roof and provide her insurers with a clearance certificate from the contractor. The next time her claim should be paid without a problem assuming, of course, that there is a next time
I hope that this provides some insight from an intermediary’s perspective.
Go by the book when insuring
As we prepare to move back to Cape Town, many things that arise might be useful to our readers.
The first thing I have discovered is how valuable certain things are and this leads me back to one of my favourite hobbyhorses – are you insured correctly and adequately?
My wife, a genealogist and family historian, has collected a fair amount of books over the years, which I have not taken that much notice of. However, starting to draw up an inventory to send to the removal companies, I have been sidetracked by various items, the first of which was Heather’s books.
To make life easier for the removal companies to quote, and because I am a quantity surveyor, I have calculated the cubic meterage of all our possessions.
I worked out that we have 2.70m3 of books and wondered how much they weigh.
The answer is 2 343kg, give or take a couple of kilograms.
Half of them are hanging off the top of our passage wall, which is in itself a problem – hopefully they stay there for the next couple of months.
The next obvious question was what are they worth. Working on a price of R300 for an average paperback, the replacement value of our books is R750 000. I would be scared to tell you what that figure increases to if I use the value of some of Heather’s rare books.
Remember:
* You should be insured for replacement value.
* Keep all your slips. The problem is we never keep a running total of what we spend on our possessions because we buy them in dribs and drabs without realising their collective worth.
* Ensure that you are properly insured.
The flip side of this story is, goodbye Mrs MacAlister’s books, hello to a world cruise on The Queen Mary, although I am not sure if Mrs Mac will agree.
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