Does home insurance cover your boiler?

The one distinction that decides it

It comes down to one question: did something happen to your boiler, or did your boiler simply stop?

Home insurance is written around things happening. The Association of British Insurers describes home insurance as covering you against damage or loss caused by perils such as “Fire, Storm, Flood, Subsidence, Burst pipes and water damage, Theft or attempted theft, Malicious damage”. Every item on that list is an event with a moment attached to it. There was a fire. A pipe burst. Someone broke in.

A boiler that will not fire on a cold morning has no moment like that. A diverter valve wears out. A fan starts to fail. A pressure sensor gives up after eleven winters. Nothing struck the boiler, so there is no insured event to point at, and the ABI names that category in its list of what home insurance does not cover: “Mechanical or electrical breakdown”, with the example of “a fridge breaking down due to it coming to the end of its useful life”.

That is the whole thing. Sudden accidental damage is an insurance question, but mechanical breakdown is not. Breakdown is a repair-and-maintenance question, and it is a different product with a different name.

Insurers word their cover differently, so treat the table below as a way to read your own documents rather than a statement about your own cover.

Same boiler, different problem, different answer

Where home insurance genuinely does help

It is easy to overcorrect and assume home insurance is irrelevant to your boiler. It is not, and escape of water is the reason.

If a pipe bursts, or a heating system leaks and soaks a ceiling, the damage to your home is the kind of thing buildings insurance exists for. The ABI's guidance on buildings insurance, linked below, defines it plainly: “Building insurance protects you against the cost of repairing or rebuilding your home if it is damaged or destroyed”, covering “the structure of your home (e.g. the roof, walls and windows) and any permanent fixtures and fittings, such as fitted kitchen units and bathroom suites”.

Note what that sentence does not say. It gives fitted kitchens and bathroom suites as its examples of permanent fixtures. It does not name boilers. Whether your insurer treats the boiler itself as an insured fixture, and on what terms, is not something to assume: only your own policy wording answers it. Do not read the word “fixtures” as a yes.

So the realistic split is this. The mess a failing boiler makes is often an insurance question, but the boiler itself usually is not.

What a boiler or home emergency add-on actually is

This is where most of the confusion lives. Some insurers sell a boiler or home emergency section alongside the main home policy, and people half remember buying it and conclude that boiler breakdown is part of home insurance. It is not. It is a separate section, bought separately, with its own limits and its own exclusions, and that matters in three ways.

1. It is optional, so having home insurance tells you nothing about whether you have it. The only way to know is to read your own schedule.

2. Emergency sections are usually written around making a situation safe rather than completing a repair. Stopping a leak is not the same promise as replacing a failed part.

3. It normally sits on the same annual renewal cycle as the rest of your home insurance, so it can change at renewal without you noticing.

None of that makes an add-on a bad buy. It makes it a thing you have to actually check rather than assume.

How to check your own cover in ten minutes

Before you buy anything, including from us, find out what you already have.

• Find your policy schedule, not the marketing email. The schedule lists which sections you actually bought.
• Look for a section named home emergency, boiler cover or heating cover. If there is no such section, you have not got one.
• Read the limits on that section. Emergency cover often caps what it pays per incident, and caps the incidents a year.
• Look for the words breakdown, wear and tear, and lack of maintenance in the exclusions. That is usually where your answer is.
• Check whether an annual service is a condition of anything, and check any boiler age limits.
• Write down what you find. If the gap is breakdown repair, that is the gap a cover plan is built for.

The maintenance point, which is worth more than any product

There is a reason insurers and manufacturers both ask about servicing, and it is not paperwork for its own sake.

HSE's advice to home owner occupiers is direct: “HSE strongly advises that all gas appliances, flues and pipework should be installed, regularly maintained and serviced at least annually by a Gas Safe registered engineer.” It is equally clear about who may do that work: “Anyone employed to work on gas appliances in domestic premises must be a Gas Safe registered engineer and competent in that area of gas work.”

If you rent, the duty is your landlord's. GOV.UK tells tenants their landlord must “make sure gas equipment they supply is safely installed and maintained by a Gas Safe registered engineer”, must “have a registered engineer do an annual gas safety check on each appliance and flue”, and must give you the record “before you move in, or within 28 days of the check”.

One safety point sits above all of this. If you smell gas, do not touch electrical switches, do not smoke, put out naked flames, open the doors and windows, and call the National Gas Emergency Service immediately on 0800 111 999. No question about cover comes before that call.

Where a cover plan fits alongside your home insurance

Keep your home insurance. It stands behind the house itself when something damages it, and a cover plan is not a substitute for that.

A cover plan handles the other half, the boiler that stops with nothing to blame it on. Smart Plan is a service plan, not insurance, from UK Boiler Company Ltd, trading since 2014. You pick the modules you want, and when a covered fault happens we arrange an engineer from a national network of thousands of Gas Safe registered engineers. The boiler and central heating module funds parts and labour up to £500 in a 12-month cover period if your boiler is under 7 years old, or £200 if it is over 7.

Two honest limits before you weigh that up. Our terms declare the equipment beyond economic repair where a heat exchanger or the PCB fails, so the plan pays a contribution towards replacing it rather than funding that repair, the lower of retail value including installation or your cover limit less the work we have already carried out (cover plan T&Cs p.8 §2.1(c) and p.23 §9.5). And a 12-month agreement period begins once you use a service.

The Helpful links at the foot of this page include our piece on whether boiler cover is worth paying for, and our piece on how a service plan differs from a regulated product.

Home insurance and boilers: your questions answered

Found a gap? Tell us what your boiler is doing.

Tell us what your boiler is doing and we will come back to you. If your home insurance handles the house and nothing handles the boiler, that is the gap a cover plan fills, and you pick only the modules you want. Boiler and central heating funds parts and labour up to £500 in a 12-month cover period where the boiler is under 7 years old, or £200 where it is over 7. Where a heat exchanger or the PCB fails, our terms declare the equipment beyond economic repair and pay a contribution towards replacing it (cover plan T&Cs p.8 §2.1(c) and p.23 §9.5). Now the small print. A £95 call-out fee, paid in advance, runs through the first 30 days, and it also applies to faults outside the plan, no-access visits and an early annual service, while cover itself is live from day one. Call-outs under a plan are booked Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00, and we aim to get an engineer out to you within two working days. A 12-month agreement period begins once you use a service. A service plan, not insurance.

Helpful links

• Boiler cover vs boiler insurance: what's the difference?
• Is boiler cover worth it? The honest maths
• Boiler warranty vs boiler cover
• Boiler & central heating cover
• Tell us about your boiler
• ABI: what home insurance covers and does not cover
• ABI: what buildings insurance covers
• HSE gas safety advice for home owners
• GOV.UK: your landlord's gas safety responsibilities