Liverpool Victoria House Insurance

You'll find this is a general principle of insurance - it's for things that break down/get damaged, etc, not routine maintenance.

I've also seen "Or due to any gradually operating cause". Meaning that if you leave a pipe dripping under the sink for months/years and you know about it, you can't claim if you get wet rot in the floor joists as a consequence.

DG

Sounds to me like you couldn't claim even if you didn't know about it, since the cause would have been gradually operating whether you knew about or not.

But, in my opinion, the pipe has "broken" - this isn't routine maintenance, the leak wasn't always there, has only just occurred due to the hot weather.

Claire

Hot weather does not cause pipes to break. It would have broken if, say, you had been doing some digging and put a pick axe through it.

It is "routine maintenance" in the sense that you need to replace the pipe because it has deteriorated with age (it happens to us all) and has reached the end of its useful life. If you like it has spring a leak as a result of not having had the benefit routine preventative maintenance (digging it up every few years to clean it and give it a fresh lick of paint). That would have made it last longer, but it's probably more economical to replace it every 50 years than to try making it last 100 by being nice to it.