What Should I Do if My Pipe Under the Sink Burst?
Shut off the water first, then dry things out and call your insurer. Sudden bursts are typically covered.
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Your burst pipe, step by step
Once the water is shut off and the area is drying out, the claims part comes down to timing and documentation. A pipe that burst suddenly, rather than one that had been dripping for weeks, is the kind of sudden water damage a standard policy pays for. Photograph the pipe, the water on the floor, and anything it ruined before you start cleanup, since the adjuster needs to see what happened. Keep receipts for a plumber, a water restoration crew, or a hotel stay if the house isn't livable, as your policy may reimburse those. Report the claim soon. Waiting lets mold set in, and an insurer can question whether the delay made the damage worse than it needed to be. Your declarations page shows your dwelling and personal property limits and your deductible.
Check what your policy actually pays out
Dwelling limits, personal property coverage, and deductibles vary a lot between insurers. If this claim stretches your coverage thin, it's worth seeing what another policy would have paid before your next renewal.
Why some water damage gets denied
Insurers draw a line between sudden damage and damage that built up over time, and that line decides a lot of claims. A pipe that bursts in one afternoon is an accident. A pipe that's been weeping behind a wall for six months, leaving a stain the homeowner noticed and ignored, is treated as a maintenance problem. Standard policies pay for the first and not the second, because the second was preventable. If an adjuster finds rot, warped wood, or mold growth that looks older than the day the pipe let go, they'll ask about it, and the claim can shrink or get denied over that question alone.
Sewer backup works on a different rule entirely. If water or sewage backs up through a drain, that's excluded on a standard policy unless the reader added sewer backup coverage separately. It's usually a cheap add-on, often just a few dollars a month, and it pays for damage from a backed-up line, an overwhelmed sump pump, or tree roots in the sewer lateral. Without it, a backup is an out-of-pocket repair no matter how sudden it was or how little the homeowner could have done to stop it.
Flood is separate again, and the distinction matters more than people expect. If the burst pipe or backup led to water coming in from outside, rising groundwater, a flooded street, a creek overflowing, that's flood damage. Homeowners insurance never covers it, regardless of how it started. Flood coverage is its own policy, usually through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private flood insurer. A homeowner with a burst pipe and no nearby flooding doesn't need to think about any of this, but anyone whose basement took on water during heavy rain should figure out whether what hit them was a pipe or the weather before assuming the homeowners claim will pay.
Mold sits inside the same sudden-versus-gradual test. Mold that grows in the days after a burst pipe, as a direct result of that one event, is usually covered as part of the claim. Mold discovered months later, with no clear tie to a specific incident, gets treated as a long-term moisture problem. It's often excluded or capped at a low limit even on policies that otherwise cover the rest of the damage. Some insurers cap mold remediation at a set dollar amount no matter the cause. The declarations page, or a call to the insurer, will show whether a mold sublimit applies, and that number is worth knowing before cleanup costs climb past it.
What about a water heater or washing machine instead
A burst pipe isn't the only way water shows up in a house, and the source changes how the claim gets handled. A water heater that ruptures or a washing machine supply line that fails works like a burst pipe for coverage purposes. It's a sudden, accidental failure of an appliance or fixture, and the damage the water causes is typically covered. The appliance itself is a different question. Homeowners insurance pays to fix what the water heater ruined, not to replace the water heater, unless the policy specifically covers mechanical breakdown. That's worth checking before assuming a new unit is part of the payout.
A slow leak under the sink, the kind that's been dripping into the cabinet for months before anyone noticed, falls on the wrong side of the sudden-versus-gradual line. If the cabinet floor is swollen and discolored and nobody can say when it started, an insurer is likely to treat it as a maintenance issue rather than a covered loss. This is why finding a leak early and reporting it right away matters more than it seems like it should. A leak caught the day it starts and reported promptly has a real chance at coverage. The same leak found three months in, with visible rot, usually doesn't.
A backed-up drain sits outside this sudden-versus-gradual question entirely, because it isn't about timing. It's excluded on a standard policy regardless of how suddenly it happened, unless sewer backup coverage was added beforehand. A toilet that backs up from a clogged line, a basement drain that overflows during heavy rain, and a sump pump that fails and lets water in all fall under this same exclusion. The fix isn't faster reporting. It's having added the coverage before the backup happened, since it can't be added after the fact to cover a loss that's already underway.
Anyone dealing with water right now, regardless of the source, should treat the first few hours the same way. Stop the water, document the damage before touching anything, and call the insurer to find out what kind of claim this is. The answer isn't always obvious from the homeowner's side. A sump pump failure can look identical to a burst pipe until someone traces where the water actually came from, and that distinction is what determines whether it's covered at all.
Before you file
Find your sewer backup endorsement and mold sublimit on the declarations page now, not after the adjuster asks. If either is missing or low, that's worth fixing before the next renewal, not this claim.
