What is the worst damage that has been caused to your home?

[reecejackox]

i havent had any really major damage to my home , apart from the boiler packing in and causing damage to the walls last year which has been fixed , apart from that nothing major.

 

[kimblebee]

about two years ago our garage was set on fire due to arson. It was caught early enough that there wasn’t too much damage. The what if’s ran through my head for months afterwards.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

did they catch the person?

 

[Meriweather]

water heater leak on second floor leaked down to bottom floor.
Had to fix the leak and repair wall board and plaster and paint and clean the carpet. And get a new water heater

 

[disneychrista]

Hot water heater leaked. Causing the laminate wood floor to buckle. Had to replace the entire hall & front room floor.

 

[leebee]

Frozen pipes in the 2nd floor bathroom. DH called me about 6pm saying "guess where I am?" He was in the living room, water pouring down. It sounded like he was in a waterfall in a train station. There was 4" of water in his toolbox in the BASEMENT. Based on the standing water, the plumber said the pipe probably ruptured around 10am- or about 8 hours of running water IN THE HOUSE. Lots of stuff trashed in the basement, lost most of the living room furniture, needed new ceiling and walls in the living room, floors in the living room, dining room, and front hallway needed to be refinished, etc. Thank goodness for insurance.

 

[kdonnel]

As a child our water heater caught on fire. The fire burned the pressure relief valve which started water spraying. That put the fire out but the water continued to spray for hours.

When we woke up there was 6 inches of water in the kitchen as it was closest to the water heater. The furthest rooms had an inch.

We had to move out for 3 months.


A friend at work had three feet of sewage back up into her house. There was a clog in the sewer line just down from her house. Everyone’s sewage from up the line came up into her washer, toilets, sinks, showers, tubs, etc. Anyhing with a drain. She had to move out for 6 months. I’m not sure how she ever moved back in. I would have sold my house.

 

[lovin'fl]

Pinhole in copper pipe in basement ceiling. Found ceiling on floor in big pile o' water.

 

[jaiminee krikit]

Our house got hit by a tornado several years ago. We had a sheet of aluminum siding come through our front picture window, spin its way through most of our downstairs, and get stuck in our utility room. Who knows what else blew through our house after that. Our back door was completely knocked off its hinges, and our garage door was blown away. We have double pane windows, and that picture window was the only one that both panes broke. Every other window in our house, only the outside pane broke, including the windows on the other side of the house. When you went upstairs, you couldn't even tell our house was hit. The roof was very damaged, siding gone in chunks, and it caused cracks in our ceilings. DH's tool shed and detached garage were both flattened.
We are surrounded by fields, so we would go out on scavenger hunts and see if we could find our missing stuff. About 1/2 a mile away I found a door knob. We brought it home and checked with a key and sure enough, it was from DH's shed! We never found the garage door. I think it's in a pond a mile or so away. I'd love to know what might be in that pond. I found our next door neighbor's wedding dress in the field directly behind our house and a whole bunch of their daughter's toys.

 

[hereyago]

Isabel came and landed a tree on and in the house.

My bedroom was damaged the most and I was in it.lol

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

Lightning strike - it hit the corner of my oldest son's room and completely destroyed half a wall. No fire, luckily. A house a few streets over was hit during the same storm and burned to the ground.

 

[Klayfish]

If we're including apartments, burned to the ground.

If we're only talking single family home, lightning strike.

 

[ronandannette]

I run the Warranty department for a home builder and over the years I’ve seen things...things you can’t unsee. Water leaks from whatever the source is far and away the most destructive thing that can happen inside a building (except of course for it burning down).

I’ve got a file of pictures so shocking we call it “Warranty Porn”. Unfortunately I can’t post them but believe me, they are epic.

 

[mamamary]

We had a pipe burst a few years back. Although I was home and shut the water off as quick as I could it still caused a few thousand dollars in damages.

 

[mnrose]

We've replaced three roofs, and siding, because of three different hail storms in 13 years.

 

[lovesmurfs]

Woman driving on the street behind our house had a seizure, which made her foot press down on the gas. Car went through our wooden privacy fence, chain link fence, kids' wooden swing set, and into our detached brick garage, sending my car sideways -- her car ran through the garage door.

You see loads of movies/tv shows which show car chases, but they never show the cleanup. A year later, we were still finding car parts in the yard. That's also when I found out that your car is a car for insurance purposes until it's parked on your property -- then it's property.

On the plus side, we got a new garage door (really needed it), roof to the garage (we negotiated with the roofers to do our house at the same time for an awesome price), added a man door to the garage (there was none before), and the repairs to the swing set, fences and my car.

The worst part -- she was only 25 years old and had just had her license returned after being taken for a year due to seizures and her car was only 2 weeks old. Apparently, she lied in order to get it back, saying she hadn't had any seizures in the year. Also, our dogs had been in the backyard -- It took forever for them to be willing to go outside again, and my kids kept asking if a car was going to run through our house.

 

[Klayfish]

I run the Warranty department for a home builder and over the years I’ve seen things...things you can’t unsee. Water leaks from whatever the source is far and away the most destructive thing that can happen inside a building (except of course for it burning down).

I’ve got a file of pictures so shocking we call it “Warranty Porn”. Unfortunately I can’t post them but believe me, they are epic.

Yup. I am in the auto and also general liability insurance claims field. Insure a lot of contractors. It's astounding the damage water can cause.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Fingers crossed---so far nothing. There have been times though with hail that I've gotten real nervous.

My mom's house has had sewer backups in the basement flood it though multiple times (it was a large reason why everything of value is in tubs or up on a table). That's a combination of a cracked sewer line pipe caused by age but mostly tree roots and compounded by the fact that my mom has no sump pump. The worst in a long while was probably about 6 inches of standing water which caused problems with her furnace pilot light going out and needing slight repairs on that. We borrowed my step-father-in-law's water pump and helped my mom get the water out of the basement. She's since paid to have the cracked pipe replaced but it's not a complete fix.

Step-father-in-law did say years ago when he first started dating my mother-in-law the apartment building he lived in ended up burned completely down. Unlucky, I can't say for sure but that same apartment complex had a different building years and years later burn completely down too. I know the last incident was lightning related don't know about the other one though.

 

[smiths02]

It was our rental property (which was our residence for 8 years before we began renting it out).
A small part of the toilet was broken (I don't remember what the part was called...the part itself was like $10) and caused a major leak which flooded a good part of the main floor and into the basement. The tenants had been away for the weekend which really exacerbated the problem. (I imagine if someone was there and shut the water off to the toilet, it would have merely been a mop up/shop vac and a call to the plumber)
It was like $30,000 to redo the bathroom, upstairs flooring, and basement (it was partially finished). This is on a home that sold for $140,000.
Plus there was cost for drying out everything.
Insurance covered everything except the deductible and the toilet part

 

[RangerPooh]

Years ago DH and I built a house (we did the work ourselves) and had just moved in. He went up into the attic for some reason and stepped off the walking board. Fell through the living room ceiling. I was stilling in the living room below and was just feet away from the spot he fell through.

Growing up our toilet overflowed and no one caught it for like an hour or two. Carpeting in the hallway and laminate in the bathroom were toast!