Home and Garden Television (HGTV) and Home Depot are two main culprits responsible for the escalation of water damage claims costs, according to Will Cook, president of Belfor Restoration Services.
These two cultural icons are fuelling the impulse to undertake an "extreme home makeover," encouraging so-called "weekend warriors" to transform their modest, 2,200-square-foot homes into 8,000-quare-foot estates, Cook observed.
Cook's presentation at the Insurance Brokers Association of B.C. (IBABC)'s 62nd Annual Conference and Trade Show in Victoria focused on explaining the escalation of water damage loss values.
"We now have 24-7 home improvement television," Cook observed. "(HGTV) host Sarah Richardson tells you that if you don't have an architecturally-decorated basement, you're not cool, you're not chic, you're not with the times.
"So Home and Garden TV is putting a tremendous amount of upward pressure on us to beautify our homes."
Home Depot enables this kind of home renovation, Cook said.
"In 1994, Home Depot incorporated in Canada," he said. "They now have revenues in excess of $60 billion in a 16-year life span.
"They enable the ‘weekend warriors,' the people that Sarah Richardson is telling to beautify their homes."
Laminate flooring is yet another culprit in the escalation of insurers' water damage claims, Cook said. And upon saying this, panel moderator Kevin McIntyre, past president of IBABC, chimed in: "Laminate is Latin for ‘crap.'"
Cook noted laminate flooring is popular in finished basements because it is scratch-resistant, does not release allergenic material and is easy to clean. "Its only known enemy is water," he added.
Unlike hardwood, laminate does not return back to its normal shape after it has absorbed water; instead, it remains swelled. And fixing it often requires the removal of baseboards and moldings, thus escalating the costs to make repairs.
As a result, an unfinished basement, which did not require much clean-up after water damage, costs about $1,400 to fully dehumidify and repair. Laminated, a similar-sized finished basement now costs about $7,500 to repair and dehumidify, Cook said.