Older Homes and Homeowners Insurance Daytona Beach
Buying an older home in Florida or restoring an older home to past glory is the dream of a lot of people, but that dream could become a nightmare when it comes to getting insurance for it.
An agency that provides homeowners insurance in Daytona Beach can provide you with information about insuring older homes. It's best to talk to an agent before you buy or start restoring an older home.
Besides their often unique architecture, older homes have characteristics that make them difficult to insure because they have too many risks. A homeowners insurance agency in Daytona Beach can explain those risks in detail.
One of the biggest is the risk for fire.
Older houses have knob and tube wiring. It was the main mode of wiring from when houses first were wired to the 1930s. It continued to be used for some houses until the 1950s. Houses then didn't have but one outlet per room and there weren't many appliances in the average home. A good example is the movie €A Christmas Story€ where the electrical outlet in the living room was a jumbled mess with plugs going into an adapter that was plugged into an adapter.
The old fuse boxes also are a problem. Continuing with the €Christmas Story€ theme, dad cast the house into darkness when he tried to plug in his €major award,€ a lamp shaped like a woman's leg with a fishnet stocking on it. Sparks few everywhere and then dad had to declare €a fuse has blow.€ There is a trick people use to keep fuses from blowing out, but sticking a penny in it is a bad idea, because it will become overheated and catch the house on fire.
A big problem with the knob and tube wiring is that there isn't a ground wire to help regulate the flow of electricity.
Other problems come from the types of materials used in old houses and the plumbing, but those may or may not affect the insurance coverage.
Just to get an old house insured you may have to make so many expensive repairs that it would push it financially out of your reach, and even then, it may be difficult to get insurance.
Getting insurance for an old Florida home you want to buy or restore isn't impossible, but to realize the dream, you need to make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open.
The O'Quinn Agency provides Daytona Beach homeowners insurancein Daytona Beach and throughout East Central Florida.
An agency that provides homeowners insurance in Daytona Beach can provide you with information about insuring older homes. It's best to talk to an agent before you buy or start restoring an older home.
Besides their often unique architecture, older homes have characteristics that make them difficult to insure because they have too many risks. A homeowners insurance agency in Daytona Beach can explain those risks in detail.
One of the biggest is the risk for fire.
Older houses have knob and tube wiring. It was the main mode of wiring from when houses first were wired to the 1930s. It continued to be used for some houses until the 1950s. Houses then didn't have but one outlet per room and there weren't many appliances in the average home. A good example is the movie €A Christmas Story€ where the electrical outlet in the living room was a jumbled mess with plugs going into an adapter that was plugged into an adapter.
The old fuse boxes also are a problem. Continuing with the €Christmas Story€ theme, dad cast the house into darkness when he tried to plug in his €major award,€ a lamp shaped like a woman's leg with a fishnet stocking on it. Sparks few everywhere and then dad had to declare €a fuse has blow.€ There is a trick people use to keep fuses from blowing out, but sticking a penny in it is a bad idea, because it will become overheated and catch the house on fire.
A big problem with the knob and tube wiring is that there isn't a ground wire to help regulate the flow of electricity.
Other problems come from the types of materials used in old houses and the plumbing, but those may or may not affect the insurance coverage.
Just to get an old house insured you may have to make so many expensive repairs that it would push it financially out of your reach, and even then, it may be difficult to get insurance.
Getting insurance for an old Florida home you want to buy or restore isn't impossible, but to realize the dream, you need to make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open.
The O'Quinn Agency provides Daytona Beach homeowners insurancein Daytona Beach and throughout East Central Florida.
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