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Fire at Sovereign Hobbies


06/24

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6 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

I've been using a tiara to comb my hair even...

Photos. We need photos or it didn’t happen.

 

I hope you’ve been spoiling your little one for her presence of mind in alerting you to the danger🙂

 

Trevor

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  • 1 year later...

Over a year has passed since this

resized_e7b357f4-a0ad-46b1-9406-66b7f689

 

...did this to our home:

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(the loft was all panelled in pine)

 

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As of today though, the cottage part of our house, which contained our 3 bedrooms, en suite and shower room has been completely gutted back to stone walls, and we now have a complete new roof

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...and a ceiling, all new plumbing (the solder melted from the original), half a floor and the beginnings of new interior wall timbers.

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Top tips?

1) Get a smoke detector in your loft. Most of your wiring is above your head. We found this from a smell before if properly got going. It took 20 mins for the fire service to arrive and 15 mins for the smoke alarms on the ceilings to sound

 

2) Throw away halogen GU10 spot lights and use LEDs instead

 

3) At insurance renewal time, insist that your prospective buildings insurer specifies which online calculator or other means they want you to use to calculate the rebuild cost. Insurance law changed in 2015 and their game now is to have a surveyor on their appointed Loss Adjuster's payroll invent a new number for rebuilding which will be higher than your insured rebuild cost. They don't feel any obligation to demonstrate how they've arrived at such a figure, but they will use it to pretend they'd have charged you a higher premium had you told them the "true" value earlier and only pay a percentage of the cost. They'll deign to factor the contents payout too despite that being a separate risk provision in your policy. You'll then discover that the Financial Ombudsman Services has written a technical note* on this scam because it happens all the time now such that the FOS is inundated with complaints and has a one year backlog to get to them.

 

4) Consider investing in a selection of larger extinguishers. The 1kg powder ones available cheaply will last only a few seconds. Hopefully extinguishers will prove to be a complete waste of money, but oh how I wish I had a proper full size water extinguisher in the house then. There are several things I thought of doing after the fact, but the mind doesn't work properly under great stress. It's better to solve problems at leisure and have things to hand when you need them in an emergency.

 

*The technical note effectively surmises that this is legal in so far as the provisions in The Insurance Act 2015, but there has been no test case which would require the insurer to explain to a court how exactly they calculate premiums. The FOS will normally find in favour of the domestic policy holder if:

- there is no evidence of a deliberate attempt to mislead the insurer with respect to valuation

- the insurer did not provide the insured with their expectations as to how to determine the rebuild valuation (e.g. specify a particular online calculator)

- there isn't actually a proportionate remedy (or "averaging") claus in the policy

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Thanks for the tips Jamie.

I can only sympathise regarding the awful position you were in… losing part of your house and then having a double whammy of having to fight to receive the benefits you thought you were due, having paid your premiums. Disgraceful.

 

Pleased to see thought that you're getting back 'to normal' after far too long.

I've checked my buildings insurance and I'll be looking for fire extinguishers…

 

Thanks matey :) 

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So back in 2016, a wildfire swept through here and over 2000 homes and apartments were destroyed. Starting the next year, all our insurance rates have slowly gone up. Then last spring, another conservative political party, one that had just been formed, was elected in our province. Their leader changed some stuff and let the insurance companies up their rates by 30%! I can't wait to see next years rate!

 

Glad you're getting your house back, Jamie!

 

 

Chris

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I had a small fire take out one and a half rooms some years ago, so I can only sympathise with the myriad practical and emotional burdens your much more significant  situation brought.  Interesting advice too.

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I'm shocked but not surprised that it has taken this long for the progress that you have reported, hopefully progress will now speed up. I must admit the initial report about the water piping solder melting was something that I would never have thought of and the idea of a fire starting in a loft never crossed my mind. As a lifelong oil refinery worker I have seen some horrendous fires so we have fire and CO monitors everywhere and an extinguisher in the kitchen and workshop/garage but the loft is unprotected. This is something that I will have to change.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

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When this came up on the ‘New Content’ thread I thought it had happened to you again, as it’s been so long. It’s disgraceful that insurance companies, when faced with a large claim, immediately do their best to find a way out of paying it. 

I was looking at fire extinguishers yesterday, but couldn’t decide which was best.

Hope the rebuilding is finished soon

 

John

 

 

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On 16/01/2020 at 04:56, spitfire said:

I'm shocked but not surprised that it has taken this long for the progress that you have reported, hopefully progress will now speed up. I must admit the initial report about the water piping solder melting was something that I would never have thought of and the idea of a fire starting in a loft never crossed my mind. As a lifelong oil refinery worker I have seen some horrendous fires so we have fire and CO monitors everywhere and an extinguisher in the kitchen and workshop/garage but the loft is unprotected. This is something that I will have to change.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

I know what you mean. As a plant operator in an oilsand extraction plant for 35 years, we had almost yearly fire training and other safety training. I was involved in one major plant fire, back in October 1987.

 

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It was a definite puckery situation.

 

 

 

Chris

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Good to see insurance companies are the same calibre half a world away....

 

Needless to say, our insurance has just went through the roof (pardon the pun) even though we haven't had any fires near here for over 10 years. I feel sorry for all the other people though. There is talk that quite a few homes will be essentially uninsurable for anyone that doesn't have a top income in many areas.

 

 

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On 1/12/2020 at 8:56 PM, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Top tips?

1) Get a smoke detector in your loft. Most of your wiring is above your head. We found this from a smell before if properly got going. It took 20 mins for the fire service to arrive and 15 mins for the smoke alarms on the ceilings to sound

 

2) Throw away halogen GU10 spot lights and use LEDs instead

After reading this thread, I’ve just replaced the last two ceiling mounted halogen lights in the house with LEDs and  I’ll be fitting a smoke alarm in the loft tomorrow. Thanks for the great advice Jamie and I’m sorry about everything you had to go through to be in a position to give it. 

 

Craig. 

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