Canterbury earthquake drainage claims

Homeowners are responsible for the drains on the property up to the property boundary, and the Council is responsible for the drain from the property boundary to the sewer main on the public road. 

All drainage repairs should be carried out by a drainage contractor registered with the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board (PGDB). The PGDB website has a list of registered professionals you can choose from. 

To assess your claim, we review the information provided to you by your drainlayer. This will include a video recording from inside your drains to identify any earthquake damage.  

If earthquake damage is found, your drainlayer must provide a report and recommended repair strategy for it. The report must also explain if any cause(s) of damage was disregarded during the assessment.

It is not uncommon for a house to have damage that is unrelated to the Canterbury earthquakes, even where some damage is caused by the CES. We review the information they provide to make sure it’s an appropriate repair strategy and the costs are fair and reasonable. We also consider any other information available regarding the level of earthquake damage to your home and land. 

You’ll need to pay the assessment and report costs. If earthquake damage is confirmed, we’ll reimburse the fair and reasonable costs of obtaining the report, according to the EQC Act. 

We have templates that outline the information we need to see on the drainage diagnostic assessments for your property. 

We’ll accept these assessments in various formats. However, it’s important the information we require, which is listed on the templates, is included in any assessment reports to prevent any delays in progressing your claim. 

If further damage is discovered after the repairs have started, contact us immediately.  

An additional payment may be available to cover additional costs under the EQC Act if it’s found the additional damage was caused by an earthquake or it needs to be reinstated as part of the earthquake repairs. We will confirm this in writing. 

Sometimes repairs can be a little more complicated than first thought. If your drainlayer identifies extra costs during the repair of your drains, they’ll need to submit a variation request.  

You can use our Drainage Variation Request Form – Online Lodgement to make this process easier. If the request contains the same information contained in the form, it can be submitted directly to your claim manager.    

Any additional costs required must be approved by your claim manager before the work continues.

We’ll confirm in writing if we accept your property has earthquake-damaged drains, and that the proposed repair costs are fair and reasonable. You can then arrange for your drainlayer to repair your drains. Once we receive notification of the completed repairs, and any relevant documentation from you, along with the drainlayer’s invoice, we’ll pay you within 7 working days.  

We recommend drains are repaired as soon as possible to ensure your property’s Land Information Memorandum (LIM) is updated to accurately reflect the condition of the drainage system on your property. 

The expert report provided by your drainlayer must provide evidence that damage was caused by an earthquake. We have outlined the information we need to receive from an expert report in our Obtaining expert reports for a Canterbury claim factsheet.  

If your earthquake-damaged drains are repaired and then damaged again in another earthquake event, we would cover them again to the extent liable under the legislation at the time. You would need to lodge a claim for new damage. 

If you share a damaged drain with your neighbour, calculations are based on an overall cost to repair the entire shared drain. The cost is then allocated to each property based on the one or more sections of the shared drain each property uses. 

Your repair does not have to be completed at the same time as your neighbour’s, if you and your neighbour agree you can do your repairs separately. However, it may be easier to use one contractor to complete all the repairs in one go. 

During the period of the Canterbury earthquakes, earthquake-related damage was covered up to $100,000 (excluding GST) – this is known as the statutory cap (the cap).    

Your neighbour’s contribution may come from their private insurer in cases where their claim is over the cap and their drainage claim is with their insurance company.  

If your neighbour was not insured, they would need to fund any contribution they have to make towards the cost of repairing the shared drain themselves. 

We recommend you seek independent professional advice if they refuse to repair their section of the shared drain and you can’t come to an agreement on how to proceed.