One of the first things we do when buying a house is take out the necessary insurance. Often this is a compulsory requirement by the mortgage lender but more and more people are now becoming aware of the pitfalls of not having adequate insurance cover for those unexpected events.

These days, everybody is aware of Home Contents and Buildings Insurance, but people are also recognizing the need to fill the gaps in these types of cover. The most obvious being home emergency insurance. Compared to the cost of the main policies this type of cover is extremely good value for money because it covers those intangible events that often cause us the most grief!

We had moved into our home and were getting used to the new surroundings. We had tried all the gadgets and fittings to apprise ourselves of their uses. So it was on the first day back to work that we started to use some of the kitchen appliances. My wife switched on the kettle and poof! Everything stopped! A fuse I thought. I quickly changed it and tried again, poof! It went again.

Whatever I tried, it blew the fuse and I was starting to blow mine! I was late for work. My wife suddenly blurted out about the home emergency insurance policy we took out when arranging the mortgage. She decided to find it and give them a call whilst I rushed off to work.

When I got home in the evening, my wife told me that the emergency electrician had called round very quickly and soon found that there was a problem with the ring main in the kitchen. We had to use fewer appliances until it could be fixed.

It turned out that the previous owners had made improvements to the kitchen themselves without consulting a qualified electrician! They had used the wrong sized cable!

We managed to get the cable replaced and everything now works fine. We could never have even guessed what was the problem let alone fix it ourselves.