What home insurance covers when water gets into an Australian home

Eighteen things that actually happen to houses, and the provision that decides each one. The useful discovery is how few provisions there are: five of them settle almost every water claim in the country.

Read from primary sources · Editor-reviewed · Current as at 20 September 2026

By the waterdamagequotesau.com editorial team · Published 20 September 2026 · Last reviewed 20 September 2026 · 11 min read

4 primary sources cited on this page. How we check what is on this site

Almost every “is water damage covered” page in Australia answers the question with a paragraph. The answer is not a paragraph, it is a table, because the provision that applies changes with the cause and there are only a handful of provisions.

Two warnings before the table. First, this is standard cover — the floor the regulations set for a prescribed contract. An insurer can sell you less, provided it clearly informed you in writing that it was doing so, and many do. Second, nothing here can tell you what your policy says. What it can tell you is which provision the argument is about, which is the part people get wrong.

Eighteen water scenarios against the Insurance Contracts Regulations 2017 (Cth), read 20 September 2026. “Listed event” means standard cover names it; it does not mean your claim will be paid.
What happened	Position	Provision	Why
Supply pipe under the kitchen sink lets go overnight	Listed event	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi)`	Fixed pipes carrying liquid. The sudden, visible failure is the easiest case there is.
Braided flexible hose perishes and sprays for six hours	Listed event, hose excluded	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi) + 19(2)(b)`	Water damage covered; the failed hose itself is wear and tear.
Hot water unit corrodes through and empties into the laundry	Listed event, unit excluded	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi) + 19(2)(b)`	Same split. The 250 litres is covered, the 15-year-old cylinder is not.
Dishwasher inlet fails while nobody is home	Listed event	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi)`	A fixed appliance connection. Note the 60-day vacancy rule if the house was empty for longer than that.
Toilet cistern overflows and runs all night	Listed event	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi)`	“Overflowing of fixed apparatus” is in the wording.
Shower recess has been leaking into the wall for eight months	Contested	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi) vs 19(2)(b)`	The escape is listed; the accumulated damage runs into wear and tear and, in many policies, an express gradual-damage exclusion.
Storm rips tiles off and rain comes through the ceiling	Listed event	`reg 19(1)(a)(xiv)`	Storm and tempest. The roof damage and the water damage are the same claim.
Rain comes through a roof that was already failing	Contested	`reg 19(2)(b)`	Wear and tear of the roof. Insurers ask when it was last looked at because the answer decides it.
Gutters overflow in heavy rain and water enters at the eaves	Contested	`reg 19(1)(a)(xiv) vs 19(2)(b), 19(2)(c)`	Storm, unless the gutters were blocked, in which case maintenance -- and 19(2)(c), action of insects or vermin, if a possum did it.
Creek behind the house breaks its banks	Flood, as legally defined	`reg 34(1)`	Covered only if flood cover was bought. The definition is fixed regardless.
Stormwater drain in the street cannot cope and water comes up the driveway	Not flood	`reg 34(1), by omission`	Never left a listed water body. A flood exclusion is the wrong reason to decline it.
Dam upstream releases and the water reaches the house	Flood, as legally defined	`reg 34(1)(g)`	A dam is one of the seven listed sources, expressly.
King tide and storm surge push sea water into the ground floor	Listed event, priced separately	`reg 19(1)(a)(xiv)`	Action of the sea and high water are named separately from flood in the same subparagraph.
Sewer backs up through the floor waste	Depends on what pushed it	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi) or reg 34(1)`	A blockage in the building’s fixed drainage points one way; a surcharged sewer fed by a swollen watercourse points the other.
Burst pipe in a house empty for eleven weeks	Outside standard cover	`reg 19(2)(f)`	More than 60 continuous days unoccupied drops subparagraph (vi).
Storm blows over the back fence	Excluded	`reg 19(2)(g)(i)`	Fences, gates, free-standing and retaining walls damaged by storm or tempest are out of standard cover, though policies often add them back with a sub-limit.
Mould appears three weeks after a covered burst pipe was dried	Follows the cause	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi), then the policy’s mould limit`	Mould resulting from a covered event is usually covered up to a sub-limit. Mould from ordinary damp is not an escape of water at all.
Washing machine hose you connected yourself pops off	Usually listed	`reg 19(1)(a)(vi)`	A connected appliance is fixed apparatus while it is connected. Some policies exclude damage from work you did yourself — read the schedule.

The pattern in the table

Read down the third column and the shape becomes obvious. There are really only five provisions doing all the work:

reg 19(1)(a)(vi) — anything that escaped from fixed pipes, tanks or apparatus. The broadest and most useful provision in the set.
reg 19(1)(a)(xiv) — storm, tempest, flood, sea, high water, tsunami, erosion, land slide, subsidence. Nine events, one line.
reg 34(1) — what flood means, and it is narrower than people think.
reg 19(2)(b) — wear and tear. The one that cuts claims back.
reg 19(2)(f) — 60 days unoccupied. The one that surprises people.

Insurance Contracts Regulations 2017 (Cth) reg 19(2)(b) · 2021 compilation, read 20 September 2026

The single most common reason a water claim is cut back. The escape of water is the insured event; the failed component that let it out is not.

The split that catches everyone: the water is covered, the part is not

Six of the eighteen rows above are the same story. A component fails, water escapes, the water does thousands of dollars of damage, and the component itself costs forty dollars. The insurer pays the thousands and declines the forty, and the householder concludes the claim was declined.

It was not. Reg 19(1)(a)(vi) covers the escape. Reg 19(2)(b) excludes the wear and tear that caused it. Both are true at once and they are not in tension — the regulation is insuring you against the consequences of a failure, not against things wearing out.

The practical consequence is that the plumber’s invoice and the restorer’s invoice go to different places. Get them itemised separately from the start.

Get the drying quoted separately from the plumbing

Four digits. Restoration companies advertising for your postcode quote the drying; your plumber quotes the part.

The three genuinely hard cases

The slow leak

Water has been going into a wall for months and nobody knew. The escape of water is listed. The damage is gradual. Most policies carry an express exclusion for damage that happens gradually, and where they do not, reg 19(2)(b) is doing similar work. What decides it is evidence: what failed, when it failed, and whether the deterioration is the cause of the loss or merely the condition of the component that caused it. That is a real legal distinction and it is why these end up at AFCA.

What you can do about it: get the plumber to write down what they found, in those terms, on the day. A report that says “perished waste connection, failed recently, water staining consistent with a period of weeks” is worth more than any argument you can make later.

The blocked gutter

Storm is a listed event. Blocked gutters are maintenance. If the gutters were clear and the storm simply exceeded them, that is storm; if they were full of leaves, the insurer will say the storm was not the effective cause. Note reg 19(2)(c) as well — action of insects or vermin — which is how possum and rodent damage in a roof space gets declined even when the water that followed is textbook storm.

The empty house

If the home has been continuously unoccupied for longer than that, standard cover drops most events, including subparagraph (vi) -- the burst pipe one. Lightning, earthquake and the impact events at (vii) to (xiv) survive.

Insurance Contracts Regulations 2017 (Cth) reg 19(2)(f) · 2021 compilation, read 20 September 2026

Sixty days is not long. A deceased estate, a renovation, a long trip, a rental between tenants — all of them get there. If a property is going to be empty, tell the insurer before it is, not after the ceiling comes down.

Mould after a covered event

Mould is the last row in the table and it works differently from the rest, because mould is never the cause. It is always a consequence, and the question is what of. Mould that followed a covered escape of water usually follows the cover, subject to a sub-limit that is often startlingly low. Mould from ordinary condensation and poor ventilation is not an escape of water and was never going to be covered.

Which is why a drying record matters more than a surface clean, and why an insurer that has paid to dry a building properly is not usually arguing about the mould that did not grow. The mould page deals with the sub-limits and with NSW Health’s position on testing.

Common questions

Is a burst flexible hose covered?

The escape of water from it is a listed event at reg 19(1)(a)(vi) -- a flexible hose is fixed apparatus carrying liquid. The hose itself is usually declined under reg 19(2)(b) as wear and tear, because a perished braided hose is a component that reached the end of its life. Expect the drying to be paid and the $40 hose not to be.

Is a slow leak under the shower covered?

This is the hardest case in the whole field and it has no general answer. The escape of water is a listed event. Damage that accumulated gradually over months runs into reg 19(2)(b), and many policies add their own gradual-damage exclusion on top. What decides it in practice is the plumber's report on what failed and when.

Is rainwater through an open window covered?

Reg 19(1)(a)(xiv) covers storm and tempest. Whether a policy responds where the window was open is a matter of the policy wording, and many exclude it in terms. Rain through a window the storm broke is a different question from rain through a window somebody left open.

Is a leaking roof covered?

If a storm damaged the roof, storm is the listed event at reg 19(1)(a)(xiv). If the roof was already failing and the rain simply found it, reg 19(2)(b) is the insurer's answer. This is why insurers ask when the roof was last inspected and why the answer matters.

Is water damage from a neighbour's property covered?

It depends entirely on what the water is. Water escaping from the neighbour's fixed pipes into your building is an escape of water. Surface run-off across the ground from their property is not flood under reg 34(1), because it never left a lake, river, creek, watercourse, reservoir, canal or dam -- which matters if an insurer declines it on a flood exclusion.

Sources cited on this page

Every figure above was read from the source it is attributed to on 20 September 2026. How we check this.