You may think that your standard home buildings and contents insurance may cover you for everything that might go wrong in and around your home but this may not necessarily be the case. In some cases you may want to think about adding a home emergency cover policy to your insurance mix to make sure that you get comprehensive cover and that you won’t have any unexpected financial surprises!

Insurance for home emergencies is designed to fill the gaps that standard policies may not be able to help you with. As you may be able to guess from its name, this kind of policy is meant to give emergency assistance. If something were to go wrong in your home, this may be a great back-up to have.

Although home emergency cover features may vary depending on which insurance provider you use, typically you may be offered assistance for:

• plumbing problems;
• drains problems;
• central heating/primary heating problems;
• loss of keys;
• mains service supply problems;
• home security problems;
• boiler inspections and services;
• pest infestations.

One of the most useful benefits with home emergency policies, however, may be the accommodation benefit that comes with some domestic emergency policies. Some emergencies may leave you in a dangerous situation. You may well be advised to move out of your home until the problem is put right for your own safety.

This may only involve an overnight move but this may work out to be costly if you have nowhere to except a hotel or a guest house. This type of policy may well come with what are known as uninhabitable accommodation benefits that may therefore be useful.

You may find that some of your emergency needs are covered by your standard home insurance but you may also find that you aren’t given any emergency help there or that you may not get all the cover you need to make a difference when it may be really necessary.

So, as an example, think about what might happen if your plumbing system failed in the middle of the night, sprang a leak and started causing water damage around your home. Although your home policy may cover your damage costs in the long run it may not be able to help with your immediate problem.

Plus, the damage caused with this kind of issue may get worse very quickly (and may therefore cost more to repair) unless you are able to sort it out immediately. Home emergency cover may be the perfect fit for this kind of incident, however. Generally, this involves making repairs/making good with the aim of preventing any further harm (to you or your belongings/property) until you are able to sort things out on a more permanent basis.

So, in this instance, you might call your 24 hour home emergency cover helpline and arrange for someone to come out immediately. This might give you a temporary or permanent fix without having to wait to get repairs done or until your home insurance company opens for business the next day.