Finance & Legal House insurance

Insurance is basically a pretty simple consideration.
You only want to insure risks that you're unwilling to deal with (financially) yourself. So yeah, having an insurance that leaves the first bit of damage for your own risk is absolutely fine.
Similarly, I never quite understood funeral insurance policies. A savings account with a bank achieves the exact same result at a much lower cost, or, at the same cost as the premium for that funeral insurance, you'll have saved enough long before that money is needed.
The residual risk of dying before your time is still there, but the marketing of insurance sellers amplifies that risk to where people get pushed psychologically to get that largely unneeded policy.

 

My renewal quote from my existing Insurer was £414 for the year I have now found this for £270 from the Saga group through a comparison site, strange that going direct to them they wanted £290

 

Generally speaking, when there is a natural disaster such as a quake and there is deaths it is not the disaster itself that kills them it is usually falling rubble from from poorly constructed buildings, this being commonplace in Indonesia where they build in much the same ignorant way as they do in PH, an English guy (which surprised me) named Phil Wilson a Chartered Surveyor writes about this on his web site (mrfixitbali) I was to gain a lot of information from him.

Powerful earthquake strikes Indonesia leaving dozens injured and two critical

Any building practise that involves using batches of Mortar over time such as Blockwork or Rendering is a complete failure there in PH, the problem being it goes off (sets) too fast due to the high ambient temperature, this not being a problem to the ignorant Pinoy construction workers when it does start to firm up, they will just add water to make in more pliable again, if you were to ask any of these Cupid Stunts why Mortar goes hard their answer would be; when the water dries out? when in actual fact it is a Chemical reaction taking place, once this starts there is no way to stop it, the high temperatures there speed up this reaction time, in the western world retarders can be added to give a longer working time in hot conditions but these seem not to be readily available there in PH? there is a natural remedy for this, adding simple table sugar helps but only around 20grms per 40kg of cement can be used any more has a detrimental effect.

So there you have it a CHB structure is doomed from the get go, it is not only the fast setting of the Mortars that causes a problem another major one is these CHB's which act like sponges and take on water fast. Below grade they will not have been rendered and they contain structural steel rebars it will take a long time but eventually the steel will corrode out, just like the high rise in Miami that collapsed, that lasted around 40yrs I think? Septic tanks built using this same method corrode even faster their life span being around 10 to 15yrs depending if done in 4inch or 6inch block, these should only be done in concrete or plastic but they never are.

When I did my own build there on going to the hardware stores to collect/order bags of cement the store attendants would tell me I am buying the wrong type all Foreigners use the pure Portland Type and not the cheaper Pozzolan type I would be buying, I would have some fun with this and say; all these Foreigners are stupid they come over here and think they know best, but I take my advice from my construction workers and they tell me the Pozzolan is the best and they know what they are doing my guys have 50yrs of building experience between them all, I only had three and not the usual 10 needed on a CHB construction. This was just a load of rubbish my workers were just as stupid as the rest of the construction workers there, but in actual fact the Pozzolan is the best having around 20% fly ash added to it the reaction time is somewhat delayed and during this time it does not heat up to the same high Temps as the Portland and this reduces thermal cracking, after 28 days has passed it still has the same PSI as the Portland.

A CIP concrete house has none of the above problems, mostly concrete is mixed and laid immediately. The Monolithic slab on which I built my steel and hardieflex house, contained 25M3 of concrete this arrived as ready mix and put down in three batches over 1.5hrs, then cured for 10 days under plastic before any work was take take place on the top of this, the chance of this cracking during any quake is slim to non existent. In the event of a quake the steel construction on my house may well bend and twist a little, but I very much doubt if it would be unsafe for anyone inside. Mind you drowning may be a problem if the 100 bags of rice hulls used for insulation were to explode out of the cavity walls but at least there will be no AC units falling off the walls to clonk them on their Heids?

 

The, "Three Little Pigs", didnt live in the Philippines.
One built his house of Straw, the second one built his house in Bamboo ( slight deviation )
and the third one built his of Bricks, ( but should of used Pozzolan cement )
Hence there is is no compensation for Structural Damage, if not constructed correctly?
Question being: What type of construction is infact insurable ?

 

John actually the three little pigs did live in the Philippines, but when the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed he blew their CHB house down without a problem this was just so easy for him, but sadly he never even had a sporting chance at them, the Fecking Filipinos had ate them all.