All Forum Posts by: Glenn Czulada

YES I wish I had a PA to talk things through with.  The SafeCo restorers showed up an hour after the fireman left and I signed their work authorization.  Insurance sent them.  Then next morning(Tuesday) I call contractor I sort of trust to come up and eyeball situation.  He shows us Tuesday afternoon and says roof could cave in, twist walls and house will be totaled.  Makes total sense, all rafters are charred to various degrees and sophets blown out around house from heat.  It seems like SafeCo (I think that's there name) "authorized" my contractor to bring my contractors small team up Fri/Sat to cut away charred falling down roof and then this week to prop up remaining roof and then cover it with plywood for winter.  They are working now.  But I am not even sure any "authorization" paperwork has been done, even though this is good for both me and insurance co, makes total sense and the insur co big loss adj says that makes sense.  Of course Thanksgiving is between all of this big mess and activity!  And my contractor is working right now. 

It's  challenge but I'm up to it so far.  Meeting clothing/elec guy in 1 hr and the stuff that i want out of house very soon.

At this point we are not going w/ PA.  I know it can go both ways.  I have to see how the remodeling/rebuild is going to go.  650K is top of head figure.  PA would have to make me 50K for me to break even.  We'll see how it goes w/o PA.  The "contents" is a big unknown at this point.  I think I have it down pretty good that instead of "repair" by restorers I can just get the repair fee for clothing and electronics and likely "junk".  Luckily the PA tipped me off to the likelihood of the clothing guy showing up right away wanting to take it all, and he did.  Clothing only has smoke damage, all of it everywhere.  So we've been going through all the old stuff, i think we are done, and clothing guy will haul out good clothes and we hope to get repair bill for all the stuff we kept and threw in big pile in middle of floors.  Same goes for electronics.  My wife has wanted a new fridge for a few years and I see I got estimate of $350 to "repair" it.  I'm just going to keep it and put that towards a new one.  Same goes for probably all the 17 yr old appliances.  

My brothers friend is a "big loss" adjuster with another big insurer and this is exactly what he does.  He talked to me for 45 minutes yesterday and confirmed and sharpened stuff that I already was aware of to some degree.   It's still all grey on who is going to "adjust" all my misc smoke damaged contents, like hundreds of books.   This adjustor told me I could get the repair money even for stuff like dirty rakes and shovels, as long as it wasn't in the trash can.  But he told me every company is different.  The big money will be in the house remodeling.  Luckily I have the blueprint.  They were water damaged in basement but will be big help to estimator. 

Tania - this is an excellent book.  Secrets of the Insurance Game: What You Need to Know About Property Damage Claims

I am tempted to buy Xact for a month to check out repair costs myself on items, but this is going so fast and it's probably a super complicated program even for contents.  I can't believe someone is going to have to catalogue zillions of items in my >6,000sq ft house.  

I had a chimney fire (wood insert-unknown cause at this point), in my 6,000 sq ft house, on Monday.  The fire was confined to the roof area of the chimney but they had the hoses on at least 90 minutes.  There was smoke damage to everything down to the basement.  Water damage throughout the house to basement.  About 1/4th of the main roof is gone now because either it burned or has been cut away by quickie contractor who is now shoring it up to make sure it doesn't collapse on the house.  

Naturally it's been a CRAZY week.  My plate was already 100% full with work and now all these professional people have come into my life at warp speed.  I have tons of issues and will be making more decisions and figuring thing out more than I ever have in my life (and that's saying a lot).  The public adjustor called me and met me on scene within 4 hrs of the fire.  I met with him for an hour the next day and he gave me a great starters education.  I can absolutely see why I should have a professional on my side to represent my interests but I'm putting a big hold on that and trying to do it myself.   

So far it's like meeting the new girlfriend.  Everything is "wonderful" with all the people I'm meeting but I know it can get ugly.  There is lots of money flying around here.  The big loss adjustor threw out 650K to rip the house apart to studs and replace all kinds of structure.  

One of the big unknowns so far is what is going to happen to "contents".  Luckily the PA sales pitch educated my enough to not let them haul all my clothes, appliances and electronic away right away the first day.  I understand there are "3 values" to every item in my house.  So far I don't have a straight answer on how contents is going to be done.  My wife and I are trying to do our part by sorting through stuff and ServePro has been working pretty good in moving things around.  

Donegal is the insurer and we have plenty of insurance, I think too much, but that's a good thing at this point.  I couldn't be more happy with the first walk through of the big loss adjustor.  Rooms that I thought had minor damage he wanted to rip apart.  Tuesday his big loss contractor is coming to work on more finite structure estimate.  

I know about Xact and have a general sense of how this is done with my research so far, but there is much to learn to represent myself properly.  There will be 100,00's of thousands of dollars flying all around, but hundreds of thousands of 10's and 20's that I don't miss out on either.  

On a personal note, we were super lucky in scoring a beautiful quite acceptable townhouse 2 miles from house.  Lucky because we live in a somewhat rural area and this is very hard to find.  So at least we will be comfortable for the next year while this proceeds.  If anyone here wants to follow this and help me, it would be much appreciated to say the least!

Right now at this second my biggest question is the contents, because structure will go more slowly.