Do home warranties cover awnings or patios?

The short answer is that awnings and other shade structures are not covered by home warranties. Additionally, most structural elements like walls and windows are also not covered.

Our family is fans of home warranties because they help us mitigate major surprise repair bills. As an example, we bought a new home in 2017 and immediately purchased a home warranty as part of the transaction.

We spent $600 on the home warranty which covered our first 12 months in our new house. I always want a warranty when we move to a new home because we don’t know how a lot of the systems worked or if there was a lot of deferred maintenance.

The house passed the inspection, but that’s no guarantee of a problem free residence. Our new home was built in 2004, and we soon learned that it was far from perfect condition.

Our first month, we were shocked to see a $350 water bill, and according to our bill, we were using more than 600 gallons of water per day. This is an absurd level of 25 gallons per hour at all times of the day and night.

I checked all the toilets and faucets, and there were some leaks but nothing to this level. We then realized there was an issue with our irrigation system.

We paid $75 to our home warranty company for a technician to come onsite, and he told us that the diaphragm that controlled the system was completely broken. He also told us that he had many broken heads and leaks in the tubing.

He spent the better part of four hours replacing the parts in the control panel and fixing the individual lines in our front and back yards. His bill for parts and labor would have been more than $800 so we felt great about the choice to go with a home warranty 6 weeks very shortly after moving in.

Many companies charge extra for irrigation systems and pools. If you have an external water feature, I highly suggest speaking with the agent when purchasing. You don’t want to assume it’s covered, and discover the coverage gap only after you need the service.

A few months after moving in, we received a notice from our HOA that our yard was out of compliance. Our tree was overgrown and our bush had a fungus. The warranty did not fully cover the tree trimming or bush removal, but it did cover up to $200 of general landscaping issues. We had to pay the $75 service call which netted us $125 to the positive. I also appreciated that we were using a trusted vendor and that I had the leverage of placing a complaint with the warranty company if I wasn’t happy with their service.

Most appliances such as stove, refrigerator, built-in microwave, washer, and dryer are covered by warranty. Since all the appliances in our home were more than 10 years old, we assumed that at least one would go out.
Thankfully none of them did clunk out this year, but our gas stove does have a burner that doesn’t light well.

Also, our built-in microwave stopped working on quick heat. It can still be used if you enter the time and power and level. Since an appliance technician service visit is $75 for any number of items, we’ve delayed filing the issue until something breaks that doesn’t have an easy workaround.

Our home is located in Arizona within a few miles of a national park. We have a great view, but the downside is that we occasionally get unwanted visitors.

In our first 12 months in the home, we had 5 scorpions in our home, and one nearly stung me. I saw it on our carpeted steps, and I assumed it was a piece of fuzz. I put my hand next to the “fuzz”, and it uncurled revealing itself to be a scorpion. If my hand had been at the stinger side instead of the claw side, I would have needed a trip to the hospital.

I had seen 4 scorpions before, but they never came close to bothering anyone in our family. However, I decided it was time to get professional exterminators. The home warranty covers one pest removal treatment per year. The normal cost would have been $150, but we were able to get the service for the $75 service call.

I accompanied the technician on his visit, and I asked many questions about the scorpion and spider removal from the home. Using his information, we created the best scorpion removal guide.

We knew our home had small leaks that dripped. We measured the water by putting a coffee can under each faucet for precisely one hour and then measuring the water that the jar contained.

Each of the facets leaked less than 1 cup per hour so we decided that 1.5 gallons of water per day (24 hours x < 1 cup/hr) wasn't pressing enough to call the plumber.

Our decision to defer fixes changed when the toilet in our spare bedroom decided it no longer wanted to stop pumping water after a flush. I turned the valve off at the back of the unit, and the plumber was able to arrive the next day since it wasn’t an emergency.

For the $75 service call, he rebuilt the back of all three toilets. The first one was totally broken, and he said the other two had the same flaw and could stop at any time. He fixed 5 faucet leaks without incident, but the valves in one of our sinks had decayed. When he took it apart, the interior crumpled in his hand so he needed to order replacement parts and left that sink off for the week until he could return.

Between rebuilding the back of 3 toilets, fixing 5 faucets, and replacing the entire spigot of a sink, our total cost for parts and labor was only the $75 we initially spend on the service call.

I have gotten this question so many times over the last year that I am adding a section to our guide. We haven’t needed a repair for our roof so I don’t have firsthand knowledge so I called the our provider. They said they were willing to cover the cost of having a technician come out and check the home. They would also cover the cost of repairs to stop leaks; however, they would not due a full replacement.

Our house is 15 years old, and I am concerned about the need to replace the roof. Several people in our neighborhood have had updated their roof so I expect that we may need to do this in the next 5 years. When January comes around, I will be doing some shopping of home warranty companies to see if any of them cover the repair. I am very happy with our current company as they’ve covered more than we spend in deductible each year.

We’re now in our second year with the home, and we haven’t had any issues to report in the last couple of month. The warranty price increased to $650 this year, and so far we haven’t used it.

We will continue to evaluate how much we spend on repairs to determine if we renew the plan for our third year in the home.

Do you have a home warranty? If so, have you used it? We’d love to hear your stories either good or bad. Feel free to send us a tweet @NewAwning.