Buying a house can be a grueling process. Sorting through the financing of what will most likely be the largest purchase of your life, and the searches and countless open house visits can wear you down. You finally find the perfect house and make an offer only to get outbid, thus having to begin your search again. When your offer does finally get accepted on your dream home, you cross your fingers and hope nothing terrible will be discovered in the home inspection that could take the deal off the table and cause the search to start all over again. When closing day finally comes and you get the keys, there isn’t a better feeling than walking through the door of your new home and finally knowing that it’s all yours.

After going through that process, the first thing you want to do is move in and just start living life. There will surely be home improvement projects and the eventual need to replace big ticket items like windows, your roof, furnace and air conditioner. But let’s face it, you just took out a six-figure mortgage that will most likely take you the next 30-years to pay off so the thought of spending any more money right now gives you heartburn. Thankfully those things can usually wait.

Sometimes you don’t get that choice. Sometimes, whether it be mother nature or other factors beyond your control, your house will need immediate maintenance and that price tag can be large and unexpected. Four years after moving into our house, we experienced a sewage backup in our basement. It was at least two days before we noticed it and by then, enough sewage and water had backed up to destroy half of our basement. Carpet, dry wall, furniture and more had to be tossed. The eventual culprit was a poorly pitched sewer lateral pipe made worse by ground settling over time. The cost to replace all of the piping under our house and the lateral to the sewer, plus the remediation and removal of the damage from the initial backup, the visits from sewer experts and plumbers, and refinishing part of our basement, was north of $25,000.

Spending that much money for something we will never see or enjoy was not on our list of future home improvement projects, nor is it probably on yours. The question we asked ourselves was, could this have been avoided or prevented. The answer to that is no. However, with the advantage of hindsight, the expense could have been minimized if we had taken these steps when we first moved in:

The Right Insurance Coverage - I’m not an insurance agent or an insurance expert by any means, but by some stroke of luck, I was wise enough to make sure I was covered for some type of water back up in my house when I first purchased my insurance. Most likely your homeowner’s insurance policy does not cover sewer back up unless you asked for it to be added, or your insurance agent recommended it. Adding it will increase your premium but take it from me, it’s worth it. Where I went wrong was only having $5,000 in coverage. At the time that seemed sufficient. What I can tell you now is that $5,000 barely covered the bill we received for remediation and removal of damaged materials. It did not cover the cost of replacing damaged items, the cost to replace the piping, or the cost of refinishing the half of our basement that was previously finished. If you’re a new homeowner, I highly recommend adding this coverage. If you have an unfinished basement, you can probably get by with $5,000 in coverage. If your basement is finished, I’d recommend at least $10,000 in coverage but probably closer to $15,000-$20,000 or more depending on the quality of your finished basement.

High Water Alarm - If I could recommend only one purchase for new homeowners, it would be a water alarm for your basement. Unfortunately, I had never thought to get one prior to this experience. You can pick one up for just under $20 plus the cost of a 9-volt battery. Essentially you put these on the floor near a location where you might have water back up or leaks, (i.e., floor drain, furnace, sump crock, etc.) and if they detect water, an alarm will go off much like a fire alarm. I mentioned earlier that at least two days went by before we noticed we had water and sewage backing up in our basement. We don’t always spend a lot of time in our basement, and there was no smell upstairs, so we were none the wiser. If we had this alarm, we would have known right away we had a problem and could have addressed it before much of our basement was destroyed. A week after the initial backup and before we ultimately replaced all the piping, we had a second backup. Only this time I had one of these alarms from Glentronics and heard it go off from upstairs. We immediately stopped running all water and flushing the toilets and got it under control. This is when we realized our issue wasn’t just a clogged pipe, but a more serious problem. I now have a couple of these placed in the basement and recommend them to any homeowner as $20 now might save you thousands later.

Back Up Plan for Your Sump Pump - While we’re on the subject of water in the basement, you should check if you have a backup system for your sump pump. While this did not contribute to our problem, it can certainly be the source of major issues. The insurance coverage mentioned above will typically cover you from any water back up due to sump pump issues so you can check that off your list. There are alarms you can purchase that will tell you if your sump pump is not functioning but that won’t fix a problem if there is an emergency. I recommend checking if your system is equipped with a battery backup system. Your sump pump needs electricity to operate, so if you lose electricity a battery backup system will kick in. In my experience, when you lose electricity, it’s usually storming which means a lot of rain, so without a backup system, you could have troubles. So, check out what you have, and call your preferred plumber to discuss installation options for a backup if you don’t have one.

If you do these three things, hopefully you can avoid a major expense and save up for those other home improvement projects on your list.

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