Home Emergency Cover | Frugal Living Tips This Week

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[AD] Usually, it occurs during the winter but for some reason just days after we turned the boiler off due to the nice weather, we notice a red light flashing and a lack of warm water! Not good! Although an absolute pain I thank my lucky stars it ISN’T winter yet and although the fact we have no hot water is not ideal…. it’s not really the end of the world.

Boiler Breakdown Cover

Only last year I wrote about the fact we had cancelled our British Gas Home Care agreement. I felt we were paying too much. It was somewhere between £30 and £40 which in my opinion was ridiculous!

My initial thoughts were to put the money we were paying into an emergency fund and use the cover that I had as part of my bank account should we need it. I couldn’t use the cover alone and needed the cash as back up because crazily enough it didn’t cover me all year round. Really not ideal at all… you try telling your boiler that it must only break down during certain months of the year!

Compare boiler cover

Shortly after cancelling my agreement my home insurance renewal was due.

We hopped on over to Compare the Market and took out a new policy as I do every year only this time around I chose to go with Swinton. Knowing not that long ago I had cancelled my emergency cover, I decided to also add on their Home Emergency Insurance.

It provides immediate help to resolve an emergency situation as a result of your home being unsafe or insecure, there being a risk of further damage to the property or a risk to family members health and safety.

What’s included in the Swinton Home Emergency Cover:

• £500 limit
• £0 excess applies
• Cover for your boiler and it’s controls
• Cover for a full electrical failure
• Cover for blocked toilets
• Cover for isolating/repair or replacement of leaking pipework causing damage to your home
• Cover for a partial failure of heating e.g no hot water
• Cover for oil fired boilers
• Cover for boiler breakdowns in summer months
• Removal or treatment of vermin and infestations

It cost me under £50 for the whole year or around just £5/month should I have decided to have paid monthly. A MASSIVE amount cheaper than I was paying PER MONTH with British Gas!

British Gas cover did include other things in the house, but I personally didn’t use them for anything bar the boiler or electrical cover.

We also now have an emergency fund.. so if there is something big that we need or if we find it is going to cost OVER £500 to fix, we do have a small amount of funds of which we used to pay to British Gas sitting in our bank just in case.

Instead of having to wait until the bank holiday is over to call someone out and paying an extortionate amount, I’m writing this as I sit waiting for the boiler man to come.

Fortunately, it’s not winter but I desperately need a shower(!). I stuck my head over the bath this morning and washed my hair in freezing cold water! Hopefully, it will be fixed in time for the kids to have their nice ‘Sunday night bath before school’ otherwise we will be nipping to their Grandma’s!

The gentleman came when he said he would (he gave me a call 30 minutes before he would be here) and informed me it needed a new low pressure valve. It is well below the cover limit at around the £40/50 mark though so it’s not going to cost us a penny, and it will be fitted next week.

If you got value from this post let me know and feel free to share with your friends or PIN to read again later and if you want to see what Swinton can do for you be sure to check them out over at swinton.co.uk