SUGGESTED CHRISTMAS GIFTS:   Do you have a favorite neice, nephew, grandchildren —-  how about tossing a carbon monoxide detector or additional smoke detectors under the tree — or a stove-side fire extinguisher.  Can you think of a better way to say “I Love you and want you to be safe”.

HIDING THOSE BOXES:  In these days of recycling, we get to know an awful lot about the eating and drinking habits of our neighbours, not to mention getting a sneak preview of everything they’ve purchased.  Well, we may be safe from our neighbours — but what about all of the people walking and driving down your road —- .  Unsavory types use garbage and recyling day to find out what great stuff we’ve purchased.   When you are tearing down those TV and XBOX and WII cardboard boxes — turn them inside out before you tie them up for the curb — so all passerbys see is cardboard, not an advertisement for what is in your house for them to steal!

From all of us at APREID INSURANCE STORES, we sure wish you all a very safe and Merry Christmas and New Year’s.  Remember OPERATION REINDEER —- operated through-out the season by your volunteer Insurance Professionals.  What a great bunch — and we make sure you get home safe.

Remember my saying — you need to find the “problem” and you have to fix the underlying “problem” and until you do, you won’t get your water damage coverage back.

Well, I guess I only partially solved my problem.  I was lulled into a false sense of security by those huge September rains (no water backup) and those equally huge October rains (no water backup).  I told myself I was going to buy an emergency pump to have on standby, but two huge rains later, I still hadn’t done it.

Because I thought I solved the underlying problem once and for all.

Well the November 11th Rememberance day rains DID ME IN. 

The alarm I had installed on the sumppump starting going off and the water kept rising.  It was coming in fast and furious too, and I was frantic.

WHO’S OPEN ON REMEMBERANCE DAY TO RENT A PUMP!  NO-ONE.

WHY DIDN’T I BUY THAT EMERGENCY PUMP.

WHY, WHY, AND WHY AGAIN!

I had made some very new friends during that August flooding, because that flood reached almost 6 feet, caused me to have to buy a new furnace and two new hot water tanks, re-insulate the cellar and replumb a great deal.  I had to have the cellar sprayed for mold and have it de-humidified.  Well, you can only imagine what all I had to do.

I started calling the emergency numbers for those wonderful people who resolved my August flooding and thankfully reached Duncan and Shawn, the owners of EASY CARE WATER REMOVAL AND CLEANUP.  Although Duncan and Shawn were working overtime with the November 11th rains, and although virtually all their equipment was tied up, they managed to drive by my Mother’s place and toss out a portable emergency pump and 25 feet of hose. 

And they managed to get that to me within an hour DURING A HUGE RAIN EMERGENCY WHERE THEIR PHONES WERE RINGING OFF THE HOOK.

Almost identical to the emergency hose and pump I intended to buy but never quite got around to it.  

AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN SAY I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!

This is a local Metro HRM firm owned and operated by Duncan and Shawn, and if you live in METRO HRM, you can’t go wrong with this dynamic duo.

Office telephone number for Duncan and Shawn is 465-3831.

DUNCAN AND SHAWN FROM EASY CARE —— YOUR BEST PALS IN A WATER EMERGENCY. 

My thanks, beyond thanks, to Duncan who answered the phone and tossed me a lifeline in the form of a pump and hose.

This morning, I’m working at home and I’m waiting for my WETT Certified Chimney cleaner to arrive and clean the chimneys for my two wood stoves.

And when I’m done here, I’m leaving with my WETT Certified Chimney cleaner and heading over to Jamie’s so his Woodstove can also be cleaned today.

I had an offer from a pal who felt he was qualified to clean my chimney’s a couple of weeks ago.  That was when I wanted to light a fire, but hadn’t already booked my appointment and had my stoves cleaned. 

It’s important to choose a WETT Certified Chimney Cleaner, one who has been especially trained to have a good look at your installation and let you know of any deficiencies in the installation or in the chimney itself before you “light up”.

WETT Certified Chimney cleaner can give you invaluable advice.  I remember one year, the WETT Certified Chimney cleaner actually gave me some very good advice on burning, because he noted an unusual amount of creosote in one of my stoves.  He asked me some questions and then gave me some great suggestions to burn more safely.

WETT Certified Chimney cleaners inspect your chimney as well as clean it, check all the bolts and parts and pieces looking for decay or deteriouration that may exist which will need attention.

I am expecting a damp raining evening tonight and tomorrow, so it couldn’t be a better day to clean my stoves and chimneys.   

I think tonight may be the night for a pot of hot chocolate and my first Autumn Fire.

What about you Jamie?

This won’t be a lesson in how to grow POT. 

Last night, on “The National”, there was a message about the rapid rise in Grow-Ops through-out Canada, and that most of the Grow-ops found by Police are in RENTED PREMISES.

So, the message put out by the  CBC was really a message to Property Owners, Rental Agents and Landlords renting properties.

That message was to be “on guard” for the potential tenant who seems to care little about the kitchen and size of the bathroom, but spends a lot of time counting electrical outlets.

Perhaps everyone who owns a rental property needs to ask themselves to take a good look around their properties and ask themselves “is this the kind of property that would make a grow op?”

Never having seen a grow-op, I can’t really tell you what kind of property would make a good grow-op, but maybe we can assume that any property can be converted into a grow-op.

One of the things the National didn’t tell Property Owners and Landlords last night was this:

ALL PROPERTY INSURANCE POLICIES CONTAIN A VERY, VERY, STRONGLY WORDED EXCLUSION THAT SAYS ANY AND ALL DAMAGE THAT OCCURS AT A BUILDING HOUSING A GROW-OP IS NOT COVERED.

NEVER, NADA, NONE, ZIP.

If the Police shoot it up, if competing grow-ops set it on fire, if it’s vandalized beyond recognition —— NO COVERAGE ON YOUR BUILDING.

Needless to say, such a building is likely to suffer some sort of damage, sooner or later, as long as the grow-op is taking place.  It’s only a matter of time.

And, we have often found it difficult to find fire insurance for a customer who owns a building that ONCE WAS a grow-op, even if the premises have been emptied and cleaned out and restored.  Sometimes you must wait more than a year to be able to buy decent insurance again.

So, be vigilent if you are a Property Owner, or Property Manager.

I’m watching the Hurricane progress up the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.  I’m praying for my neighbours to the South and hoping they come through this Hurricane safely.  Already there is hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and it is projected that by the time Irene leaves the United States, the damage will be in the billions.

I’m watching the Weather Network and thinking about how much time I have available to me today to prepare for the winds we are expecting overnight and into Monday morning.

I’m making myself a little list of things to do.

Put my potted plants in the garage.  Tie up my lawnchairs and tuck them in a secure area.  Lock down the automatic windows of my greenhouse, pull back the portable awnings.   Put some pallets on top of the tarps that keep my wood dry.  Fill pots of water in case I lose power and cannot run my water pumps.  Charge up the battery on my flashlight.  Unlock the side door of my garage in case my automatic doors won’t open. 

And, like you are probably doing, I’m looking at my garden and my trees in my yard hoping they’ll survive the wind that is being projected.  I do have a lot of brand new trees planted in my backyard and they aren’t well rooted yet.  I may have to go looking for them tomorrow around my neighbourhood, bring them back home and replant them.

I’m looking at my larger trees hoping they’ll be fine. 

I remember Hurricane Juan like it was yesterday, and we aren’t expecting the force of Juan, (thankfully), but a lot of people lost a lot of trees and were confused about their home insurance and trees that fell.

When we buy home insurance, we buy insurance for our “building” and our “contents”.  We don’t buy insurance on the land outside our building or anything growing on our land.  So the cost of tree removal and limb cutting is a personal expense each of us must bear ourselves. 

Sometimes, our insurance companies bear such costs, but only when the fallen trees have hit our homes and have to be removed to fix the hole they left in our roof. 

In the aftermath of Juan, a lot of people phoned us to ask if they could force their neighbours to bear the cost of tree removal if the tree belonged to the neighbour.  And in most cases, the answer was NO, or not recommended.

Hopefully, if a neighbour’s tree falls in your yard, you and your neighbour will work together to get rid of it, your neighbour may even bear the cost and assume some responsibility, but there are only limited situations in which you could actually force (by legal means) the costs upon your neighbour.

My new little trees won’t do any damage to my neighbours property; but if they blow out of the ground and I can’t find them, a lucky neighbour may wake up tomorrow with a newfound Youngii Weeping Beech, or a nice Weeping Mulberry or a Japanese Weeping Cherry.   I haven’t staked my new trees yet, and if the rain holds up today, I may get that job done. 

As usual, I have a few containered plants I won’t be able to lift by myself, so those will just get “dragged” around to what I hope will be a reasonably secure area.

If I prepare correctly, the only thing I’ll have to worry about tomorrow morning is how to heat some water for my morning tea.

How about you?

I am in the process of going through such an event right now.  And YES, I do have insurance for water damage backing up from drains and sewers. 

However, if I don’t establish the cause of the water backup and rectify it myself, I won’t be keeping my water damage backup coverage.

Here is the problem with our water draining systems.

They fail to cope.  They need upgrading regularly to cope with excessive water.  The first failure tells you that there is a new standard that must be met, a new level of water that is now entering the home and that something must be done.

Sure, the resultant water damage is insured — my damage is — but I will still  need to, at my own expense, figure out a way to prevent it from happening again — to find the failure in the system — and to fix the failure in the system — and if I don’t……

I will lose my backup coverage until I have.

Sometimes the problem does not lie with you.  It lies with your Municipality who has outdated drainage systems that cannot cope with the flow any longer and lack of budget to rebuild their drainage systems. 

This isn’t the problem in my case.  In fact, we aren’t quite sure what the problem was which means I’m going to spend a lot of money fixing perceived problems that may be real, or may not be real.

I see this every day “on the job” communicating with many of the valued clients of APREID Insurance Stores.  Sometimes the problem is obvious, other times it isn’t.

I’m sure that the cost to prevent it from happening again will end up being much larger than my actual claim for the damage the water caused, and those costs are UNINSURABLE at any cost.

It is our responsibility as Homeowners to keep our systems functioning properly.  Insurance is about the resultant water damage that happens when our systems fail, but rebuilding, or retrofitting the system is a cost we must all bear as homeowners.

It pays to be alert to warning signs that electrical systems, plumbing systems, drainage systems and roofing are all being upgraded as they wear rather than waiting for a total failure that causes damage through-out the home.

In my own case, I thought I did.  We had some pretty heavy rains in the late winter, and as always, when the ground is still frozen, that rain has no place to go…….I had a small water backup from my sump-pump in the early spring, luckily it was very small, but I said to myself, “this sump-pump needs upgrading to a larger model, we seem to be getting more and more rain these days”.

And I did upgrade the sump-pump to a larger more powerful model.

But it wasn’t enough!   I had almost 5 feet of water in less than 3 hours.

We all have a duty to minimize damage and loss, and as soon as the water was discovered, off to Home Depot we ran to rent pumps and get windows open and start pumping out the water. 

Drying out the basement was our second priority.  

And now we are dealing with our Adjuster and various contractors to fix the damage caused by the actual water (insured) and dealing with the cause and upgrading the system (not insured).

I now know there’s a new standard.  I don’t exactly know why, after so many years, water is starting to enter the basement, but it is —- from a source I may never discover. 

My Municipality tells me that it is each Homeowner’s responsibility to deal with water that comes on to their property and bear that cost.   But they are quite willing to help me find a solution that will work for the NEW STANDARD.

When it comes to water damage, we can never assume “fluke” not if it’s natural water or sewer that has backed up.  Once it has happened, our systems have sent us a message.

“I NO LONGER FUNCTION ADEQUATELY’

In my case, I had two hot water heaters in the basement, both of them are “toast”.   I have already purchased replacement hot water heaters and relocated them upstairs.

The furnace is also “toast”…..and the replacement furnace will be suspended from the rafters, about 4 feet off the ground.

The basement is otherwise unfinished.  

Until such time as I have a solution that WILL WORK, and I’m  not sure exactly how long that is going to take, I will at least turn water into a nuisance and not something continuing to cause damage.

Meanwhile, HRM as well as a drainage contractor are looking at potential solutions I can deploy.

And I remember it like it was yesterday.  I was excited, petrified, anxious. And I was willing to go the distance, do whatever it took to become successful and built a lasting entity.

I can’t say I was thinking of lasting entities in those early days.  I was thinking more about survival, paying a few bills, figuring out how stretch a dime into a dollar.

But I was one lucky little gal.   When I went home from work one night to sit down and tell  my parents that I was going to quit my job and start  my own business, there I was, all of 25 years old and a single parent to a young active little boy.

Of all the things my parent could have said to me under the circumstances, they said none of the obvious.  Instead, they said,

“Go for it, you can do it, you’re brilliant, you’ll be a huge success and we are with you all the way!”.

In those early years, my relationship with my parents became almost a business partnership —— they made everything I became possible. 

They babysat, cooked, fed us.  My mother did our laundry.  My father brough food to the office when I was working around the clock (as I almost always did).

Both my parents are gone now — but they did live long enough to see APREID become stable, secure and poised to head into the next generation.

And I think tomorrow, they’ll both look down from heaven and they will whisper to me  “We knew you could do it”.  “Way to go” — here’s to 31 more.

I’m sure this little story will really DATE ME!!!

Many long  moons ago, APREID got it’s first fax machine.  It was the latest thing and boy was it expensive.  So much so that we LEASED IT.  Not very many people had fax machines yet.   And we were phoning friends and collegues in the insurance industry to please send us a fax so we could test it out.

Every time the fax machine rang, I swear our entire staff at the time would drop what they were doing and run to the fax machine to watch this piece of funny paper come out of it.  And we would OOOH and AAAH marveling at the possibilities this  new invention would bring to our day.

Eventually fax machines became standard, we got used to it, we didn’t oooh and aaah as much.  We soon had 3 or 4 of them, all costing a tenth of the original.

For years, I would NOT THROW AWAY the orginal fax machine.  When I remembered the cost, I would say “no way!  we are using that machine until it dies on us.

Then came computers, and email, and cell phones and websites and facebook and twitter everything else we all now take for granted.

And now we are BLOGGING. 

Welcome everyone to the very first APREID blog.

-Aileen Reid