How To Choose A Swimming Pool Insurance?
A natural pool or a traditional pool, swimming pools add beauty to your backyard. However, with swimming pools comes responsibility. To avoid any uncalled damage to your small or big swimming pool, you need to insure it.
Having a swimming pool in your property guarantees you hours of back to back fun. This fun is not only limited to you; it also extends to your friends and family as they dive into your pool to have the time of their lives. Swimming pools are great for pool parties; however, they also call for added responsibility on your part.
This is where swimming pool insurance comes into place. Swimming pool insurance is a great way to guard your swimming pool from any damages and liabilities on your part. Lucky for you, insurance companies exist to offer swimming pool insurance for your state-of-the-art swimming pools.
Prerequisites For Swimming Pool Insurance
Rules and regulations regarding swimming pool insurance may differ from State to State. Nevertheless, here are some of the basic requirements of insurance companies that you need to fulfil if you wish to insure your swimming pool.
- You need to build an enclosure or fence around your swimming pool.
- You must possess a swimming pool enclosure permit.
- In-ground pools must have a depth of at least 1.2 meters.
- Your pool shouldn’t be easy to climb for children.
Choosing The Best Insurance Company For Your Swimming Pool
A lot goes into choosing the best among other insurance companies. Some of the green signals you should look for while going for swimming pool insurance are:
- The insurance company should be able to provide indoor as well outdoor swimming pool insurance.
- The insurance company should be able to provide insurance for inground pools as well as outdoor above-ground pools.
- The insurance quotes shouldn’t drill holes in your pocket.
- The liability coverage that the insurance company provides should:
- Cover pool leaks.
- Cover property damage to other people’s belongings.
- Have medical coverage for other people’s medical bills in case of a bodily injury.
- o Cover legal defence and settlement issues if someone sues you because of your swimming pool.
We will be discussing more about insurance liabilities and coverages later in this article, so keep reading until the very end!
Does Home Insurance Cover Swimming Pool Insurance?
Swimming pool insurance is a part of your homeowners’ insurance and guards you, your loved ones, and your pool against potential damages. This means that if any damages occur due to your swimming pool, your homeowners’ insurance policy will cover it. However, you may need to increase your budget if you want additional coverage for your swimming pool from your current insurance policy.
In the insurance world, you’ll find many homeowners insurance policies that straight-out reject giving insurance coverage for an in-ground or above-ground swimming pool, depending on the swimming pool design. Before asking your home insurers and expecting them to provide full insurance coverage for your swimming pool, you need to analyze their insurance policy carefully.
You can always give a call to different insurance companies out there and get a know-how of their insurance policies and whether they’d be insuring your big swimming pool or not. If they do not, you might want to consider investing in separate insurance for your swimming pool, depending on your swimming pool design.
However, it’s incredibly crucial to know that you won’t get any insurance claims if any of the damages to your swimming pools is due to your own negligence.
What does homeowners insurance cover?
If your homeowners’ insurance covers your in-ground or above-ground swimming pool, they’d most likely cover the cost of a person’s medical bills if a person gets injured because of your swimming pool. However, this coverage might not entirely cover their medical bills, and they might sue you for their damage, and you don’t want this. To save yourself from this chaos, it would be better to increase your insurance coverage by paying extra costs to your insurers.
Typically, homeowners insurance also covers repairs to your swimming pools if it’s covered in your insurance policy. You’ll receive reimbursements up to the limit that was specified in your insurance policy.
However, expecting your insurers to provide coverage in case the pool water freezes in the winters would be unrealistic. It would be best if you drain the pool water yourself before the start of winters, that is, if your part of the country gets icy winters.
Going Beyond Homeowners Insurance To Insure Your Swimming Pool
Expecting your homeowners’ insurance policy to cover your swimming pool wholly would be fantastical. To protect your swimming pools from damages that go beyond the reach of standard insurance policies, you’d need to invest in separate insurance for your swimming pool. This is called an umbrella policy.
An umbrella insurance policy is an additional coverage that extends beyond the limitations and coverages of other insurance policies. Umbrella insurance can cover bodily harm, property damage, certain litigation, and personal responsibility scenarios resulting from your swimming pool.
It would be best if you talked to your insurance agents and got insurance quotes from various insurance companies out there. An umbrella policy adds that extra layer of safety, precautions and insurance coverage to your backyard swimming pool activities.
In deciding on an umbrella policy for your swimming pool, your insurance agent will guide you. They will tell you if you have sufficient protection for your swimming pool covered in your current insurance policy, or you might want to spend some dollars on upgrading it.
Before getting started with homeowners insurance, it would be best if you tell your insurers about your swimming pool. Ask them what they could do to cover it in their policies and whether you’d need extra policies for additional coverage.
Insuring An Above-Ground Pool
If you have an above-ground for people to adore sitting in your background, it would be best if you tell your home insurance agent about it. It would help if you asked them whether it would be covered in the regular homeowners’ policy or not.
Usually, above-ground pools are not included in homeowners insurance policies due to their additional risks. An above-ground pool has a swimming pool design that is literally above the ground. Any damage to its walls brings an added risk of flooding your yard or basement. This damage wouldn’t be covered in your regular insurance policy, and you might want to give your insurance company a call to increase the insurance coverage in your current insurance policy. Your agents will help you determine how much of an extra investment you’re looking at.
Umbrella Policies For Your Swimming Pool
As you might have already known by now, most homeowner policies have a set limit for swimming pool coverage. This is when the need arises to add an umbrella policy for greater insurance coverage for your swimming pool.
You and your family may decide that purchasing an umbrella insurance policy to supplement your homeowner’s policy makes sense. People who own above-ground or in-ground pools frequently add this insurance as extra coverage in the case of a pool accident in order to completely safeguard their assets.
An umbrella policy typically provides up to $1 million in liability coverage. It is activated only when all funds from the homeowner’s insurance policy have been depleted, potentially from paying out a potential injury settlement as a consequence of a pool accident.
The Cost To Insure Your Swimming Pool
You may anticipate your home’s insurance premiums to grow as having a swimming pool in your premises raises your risks, particularly your liability risk. You’ll need to increase your liability limits, which means more coverage to pay for, and an insurer will see your house as more dangerous to insure, raising your premiums. However, when selecting the best insurers among the top insurance companies, an intelligent move would be to compare their insurance quotes and see which company offers the most.
However, there are methods to save money and lower your insurance costs. An insurance professional can assist you in identifying discounts and other methods to keep your homeowners’ insurance costs low, even if you have a pool.
The potential risks posed by a pool to your family are frequently larger than the standard liability limitations provided by home insurance plans. A basic house insurance policy provides $100,000 in coverage, but if you have a pool, you may want to extend it to at least $300,000 to give your family peace of mind. This will raise your annual home insurance costs by about $50 to $75. A greater coverage naturally means more expensive insurance premiums.
A standard policy may offer up to $1 million in liability coverage if you choose a pool insurance floater endorsement. This pool insurance floater might cost an additional $200 – $300 per year on top of your usual rate.
Coverage under swimming pool insurance policies
Let us now have a look at what swimming pool insurance policies cover. While selecting an insurance company for your swimming pool, it would be best to look if they provide the following coverages and to what extent.
Medical Coverage
Someone getting injured due to your swimming pool can be horrendous. Medical bills are no joke as they might rise to a sky-high amount and will definitely drill a hole in your pocket if you pay them yourself. According to law, if someone gets hurt on your property, you stand personally liable.
Medical coverage provided by your insurance company pays the medical bills you have been injured due to your swimming pool. However, they only pay bills to a specific extent ($1,000 to $5,000, depending on the company); you have to pay the rest of the amount yourself. To save yourself from this nightmare, if you invest in an insurance policy with greater medical coverage in the first place.
Property Coverage
Your swimming pool may cause damage to people’s personal belongings, and again you’re personally liable for that. Lucky for you, a good swimming pool insurance policy provides property liability and coverage for others’ belongings.
If something like this happens and the person wants compensation, you can easily file a claim with your swimming pool insurers and get things sorted. Again, the compensation that your insurers provide you is highly dependent on the liability limit set in your insurance policy.
Legal Coverage
A suitable insurance company covers legal defences and settlement coverage in their policies. You never know that someone might sue you if something bad has happened to them because of your swimming pool.
As unfair as that sounds, this can actually be the case for you, and you might have no other option but to settle this legal dispute. This settlement can really be expensive and not at all what you were expecting from your big swimming pool. Luckily, swimming pool insurers provide legal coverage, and you won’t have to rely on your personal finances to settle the dispute.
Is getting an umbrella policy for your swimming pool a good idea?
The cost of medical responsibility or a lawsuit frequently surpasses the limitations of your normal home insurance policies, so adding your pool to the umbrella policy may be a prudent decision.
When the liability limitations on your homeowner’s policy are surpassed, you should consider purchasing umbrella insurance. Its purpose is to cover pools with a high liability risk profile when a pool endorsement or rider or regular homeowners insurance would not provide enough coverage.
When selecting an insurance company, make sure that they offer umbrella policies to supplement their regular policies.
Ending Thoughts
Swimming pool insurance plans are a great way to ensure that you and your swimming pool are safe from any potential damages. Swimming pools are a great means of providing water-related recreational activities. However, swimming pools can also be high maintenance and protecting them with an insurance plan is an intelligent move.
Before selecting the best swimming pool insurance company, make sure you do your research on all insurance companies out there. Only then would you be able to make the right decision of choosing a suitable company to insure your swimming pool.
